Arrived Friday pm after several days in Lusaka. Dogs went ape**** when they saw us. Look healthy and ready to fly.
We started packing yesterday morning and discovered all of our camera gear had been stolen. Not cheap equipment and all together probably around $50k. It was a very precise - nothing else taken. Camera bags were on two shelves of a bookcase in our bedroom and two big Canon lenses in one of my dresser drawers. Nothing else rummaged through, tv still here. Camera bags we still in their proper place but emptied of their content. Our guess so as not to alert our housekeeper.
But we think it was an inside job. We let a friend from the US stay here in November. She has a Zambian boyfriend and apparently there were parties held here while we were gone. After discovering the theft yesterday Melissa called her and asked if there were any people here while we were gone and she told her no with the exception of her bf. Facebook told another story and we grabbed screenshots. A couple of hours later both the friend and her bf had deleted the pics from their FB pages.
Lundazi's finest were here this morning to dust for prints. We have the names of those in the pics because they were tagged. They'll start rounding up the suspects to interrogate them. We've been told the Zambian jails aren't as nice as American jails. They also give the same puzzled look when you tell them about police brutality as they do when you talk about catch and release fishing.
I doubt we'll see our gear again but hoping to get some sort of insurance coverage through Presbyterian World Mission. I'll keep you posted as things develop.
We started packing yesterday morning and discovered all of our camera gear had been stolen. Not cheap equipment and all together probably around $50k. It was a very precise - nothing else taken. Camera bags were on two shelves of a bookcase in our bedroom and two big Canon lenses in one of my dresser drawers. Nothing else rummaged through, tv still here. Camera bags we still in their proper place but emptied of their content. Our guess so as not to alert our housekeeper.
But we think it was an inside job. We let a friend from the US stay here in November. She has a Zambian boyfriend and apparently there were parties held here while we were gone. After discovering the theft yesterday Melissa called her and asked if there were any people here while we were gone and she told her no with the exception of her bf. Facebook told another story and we grabbed screenshots. A couple of hours later both the friend and her bf had deleted the pics from their FB pages.
Lundazi's finest were here this morning to dust for prints. We have the names of those in the pics because they were tagged. They'll start rounding up the suspects to interrogate them. We've been told the Zambian jails aren't as nice as American jails. They also give the same puzzled look when you tell them about police brutality as they do when you talk about catch and release fishing.
I doubt we'll see our gear again but hoping to get some sort of insurance coverage through Presbyterian World Mission. I'll keep you posted as things develop.
