Tuesday night, October 30, 12 o clock. I work late on a new Ad!dict book that needs to go to the printer on Thursday. It’s a book that I’ve called WORLD 2.0.
Packed with recycling, rethinking stuff, with ideas from creative minds from the addictlab database from all over the world.
The baseline of the book will be: Ideas to create a better world.
Hilarious, if you know what’s coming.
I’m also finishing my presentation for my meeting in New York: I’m leaving tomorrow, October 31, for meetings and interviews on an exhibition on Nano technology, an outreach project combining industry, research & culture. Important meetings for me with the MOMA, So I decide to go to bed at about midnight.
Couple of hours later.
Two guys come in via a small window in our bedroom, with two guns. They force us to set out the alarm, then force us all (children and my mother in law who is visiting... ) to lay down on the bed. I hear them go down and open up for a third one.
One comes in with my squash shoe. I thought it a bit inappropriate to discuss a squash game at that hour.. He ties us up with the shoelaces, quite firmly, pulls up a children's chair and sits in the doorway.
Emma.Emma needs to go to the bathroom. Of course, in every hostage situation someone needs to go to the bathroom. There would also be someone pregnant but that part was left out of our script. We ask our guard to let her, yet I don’t want her to go alone with him. Marleen goes with her. When Emma comes back, she whispers: ‘This one is nice, he lets us go to the toilet.’
Lucas is awake too. He rests his head on my leg, and has the best view of us all on the guard.
He is quite analytic.’Dad, if they have gone, can I then read a book? Or watch television? I‘m awake, I will not be able to sleep again.’
A bit later he asks me if I ever have been through something like this. I answer him no. His eyes light up. ‘Then I can tell this to my friends and my children when I’m older’. He has no idea how much I’m wishing that he will be able to tell it to whomever whenever.
I realize that with two guns there is not much one can do. Because they swap guns when they swap guards, I understand that one of the guns must be fake or not loaded.
Still with one gun, my biggest fear is what happens if they ‘re angry not finding what they’re looking for. Three, four times they come in to ask for cash, for the vault. They search the whole house, looking for precious stuff, hidden vaults.
We don’t have that.
I try to imagine how I can defend my family if ever they would turn against us. To Petra, to Emma. Horrific thoughts. And in no way I would let them do without putting up some sort of fight. I try to figure out how I ‘m tied up, how the knots work. The harder I pull, the tighter they get. Even today, two days later, my thumb is still numb.
I try to break the laces by rubbing them over the side of Emma’s bed, but that is obviously not sharp enough. I know that in Emma’s toy shop there are children’s toys to play ‘kitchen’. And I know there is a little knife as well, but it's out of reach.
I realize that I could put my hands from my back in front of me by sliding my hands underneath my body and putting my feet through.
The guy is sitting only two meters of me, so he could see that as an act of aggression. Which obviously it would have been. I keep it in mind, for later on, when things would go bad or when they’ve gone.
Emma’s savings.
Petra turns around. She’s having a hard time. It takes ages, and I know the shoelaces hurt, and the impossibility to move adds up to a claustrophobic feeling she can’t stand.
Yet she thinks about Emma’s saving money, and I agree. Maybe if we tell them where he can find Emma’s money we could fasten up the process , get them going. So we tell Emma, and we explain to the guy where he can find it.
He calls one of the others, and standing in the door, they’re splitting the R200 (20 euro). The guard then neatly closes up the piggy bank and puts it on the floor. He says ‘thank you’. How surreal can you get?
It takes ages.
I want him to think we’re human. So I ask our guard where he comes from. 'Are you from South Africa?' At first , he doesn’t understand. It is a question he doesn’t expect. I repeat it, and he says yes. I tell him we’re from Belgium.
Marleen turns to me and doesn’t get it. 'Are you socializing with the guy'?
They stayed for about an hour.. they found the remote controls of the car, the garage, the outside gate. So they took my whole work & more : 6000 digital pics, 2 laptops, desktop, digital camera, Playstation, PSP, ipod, cellphones, DVD camera, jewelry and a bit of cash. They locked us up in our bedroom, and drove away with Petra's company car. I cut myself loose with a razor blade then untie Petra and Marleen. I could escape via the outside window and open up for everybody.
The fear of what could have happened is bigger then the actual loss, yet my children seem to be ok.
Minutes after I have alerted the outside gate, our place is crawling with people. Security agents asking if we had a panic button. To be honest, I wouldn't have pushed it and be between three armed guys inside our house and the armed security forces on the outside.
The police arrives late - the security people gave the wrong address. Two cops, one more cop, two detectives. And the obvious guy from CSI Johannesburg doing the fingerprints. It is an interesting photographic process.
Missing.
They took all the electronic stuff. But a cellphone is not a cellphone. It is a
container of contacts. A binary extension of our mind. It takes a while to retrace cellphone numbers and important contacts.
My loyal MacBook Pro is more then just a tool too. It's my office and reason why I could move to South Africa in the first place. For 80% of my job I use it to go online to the addictlab site that runs on a remote & protected server.
But both Mac and cameras are
containers of history. The robbers have taken away 6000 images of my past and I hate them for that.
But it’s in those times of distress that you discover human beauty.
At school, the day after. It's Halloween. (How horrible can Halloween get?)
One of Emma’s class mates comes up to me: I’m sorry that you were robbed.' A girl of 6 being a grown up woman! Surprised , I thank her and turn my head away to avoid her from seeing the tears in my eyes.
Emma’s other friend Luz came with the idea to give back Emma’s saving money. Her parents Eric and Chris should be proud : raise a child with thoughts like that and your parental task is as good as finished.
Flowers from Eskom & chocolate eggsThe support from the people around us is moving. Petra’s client contacts drop by to chat or send flowers. Dupont arranges immediately for another car and cellphone. Dupont is sending someone from Geneva to check where the security can be better.
Marike drops of her computer so that I can continue working. Even though not Belgian the Christmas chocolates taste good with a glass of wine. We tell the story over and over.
The eternal optimist in me might be right: people are good from the inside.
A theory that is hard to defend, having had to call my parents and family who are staying all together in a holiday house in Belgium. The grief and sorrow and fear were unbearable.
I think of the extreme right comment one day on my blog. That we were stupid to go to South Africa. That we are putting our children in great danger. That the fences around us will never be high enough. I was disgusted by the tone of voice and the blind anger in that text. Yet how, today, can I prove them wrong?
I hate the robbers for putting suspicion in my mind. Looking around me while shopping, not out of fear, but hoping to run into them. Me, having organized an Open Lab in Bree street to give a platform to local creative talent. Where one - black - guy had come up to me asking - with tears in his eyes - why a guy from Belgium had to prove to all of them that Bree Street was not dangerous. I wanted to do my part of the job to work on the brand of South Africa.
Because there is more. Look at the speed with which the news travels. Our regular social networks, the compound where our house is, the kids at school, our friends, social & business network. Simply by having to cancel my meetings in New York you can add to that my network of creative thinkers from all over the world, this addictlab network. Everybody has heard: South Africa is not save. It is not ready to host the 2010 World Cup when people are threatened at gun point.
The walls, fences and security companies are a laugh. But Emma, Lucas, Petra, Marleen, we're all alive. We will cope. We're installing extra security systems, beamers, hell, even get a dog. And if we won't feel safe anymore, we will leave.
For South Africa, on the other hand, the situation is worse.
This was an act of terrorism.
Would someone acknowledge that?
