Fear and Trembling

So… I woke up yesterday morning and found myself unexplainably locked in my bedroom. I had the key, but it would not open the door. Kevin left about an hour before for an early morning at court. I called Kevin to find out if he had locked it from the outside, but there isn’t a key on the outside, so that was impossible. I banged, I knocked. Nothing.

At this point, all manner of unsightly things were running through my head – maybe someone is in our apartment stealing all our stuff and locked me in so I couldn’t stop them. Maybe the housekeeper turned on us. Maybe… maybe… maybe. It was terrifying.

Forty-five minutes later, the housekeeper comes in and hears me knocking from the bedroom. She speaks no English, so I’m not sure how we communicated. I would shake the door trying to get out. At one point, she put her hand under the door to get the key. When she finally tried it three or four times herself, she finally understood that it wasn’t my fault that I was stuck.

In fact, the door was broken. Bona fide broken. There as a screw stuck where the lock would generally go. In all my shaking, I almost broke it. You can see the notch I took out of the door jam.

So I hear the housekeeper shout some phrase in Kinyarwanda and a maintenance guy comes and tries to get me out. Another phrase, and another employee. At this point, Kevin finally got home from court. He asked if they could get me out the side door (which was locked, but I didn’t have the key in the bedroom) and I was finally released.

I don’t know why I got so shaken up about it. It was alarming and I was still half sleeping and my husband was 30 minutes away and I didn’t have any friends I felt totally comfortable to call over to help. That’s all part of it.

Anyway, I cancelled my afternoon appointment and I am working from home. My insides are tense. I’ll go out tonight for the BDC, but until then, I think a little relaxing is in order.

Everyone I’ve told is like “Yeah that happened to me once!” I don’t know if this is just an Africa thing, or if it happens everywhere and people don’t talk about it. Strange….

Regardless, if the first time I've been afraid is stuck in my own bedroom, I think we're in a nice place.