A tale of woe from the boonies: ranting on my stolen Blackberry

Two weeks ago I was boasting to my buddy Al, who was complaining to me about his stolen mobile phone, that such misfortune would never befall me. Behaving like a pedant, I told him that, as I always wear jeans and as I always tuck my phone in the hip pocket of my jeans, I'd never be a sucker to Kinois thieves... Little did I know that just a few days later, this mischief would be played upon me at the family house where I live in this city teeming with sociopaths and kleptomaniacs whose callousness knows no bounds.

The irony was compounded by the fact that on the night my Blackberry vanished as if by sleight of hand, we'd just received word that a 17-year-old relative had died of internal bleeding after receiving a beating administered by two of her maternal uncles for stealing their iPod and a sum of 3,000 Congolese Francs.

Tradition requires that at a wake people sleep on the floor. Woe betide me for following such a stupid custom... I plugged my Blackberry into an outlet that was less than 1 meter from where I slept. In the morning, the thing was gone...

The most amazing thing about the event was that when I confronted the known family kleptomaniac who is the prime suspect of the theft, he turned around and acccused me of sorcery for tarnishing his reputation...

Curse upon this kleptomaniac and the person who bought my Blackberry from him...