Better to be bothered but secure

On Christmas Eve I went to an event on the other side of the island. By island standards the event was nothing to write home about. It was sparsely attended, there weren't a lot of flowers for making the traditional necklaces, the gift bags were generic in the extreme, and the food was... insufficient and not what people from my side of the island were used to. Oh, and my friends and I were supposed to be given a ride home by a friend, but he bailed and we had to look for a taxi bus to get home.

When I got home, I was tired, but I had a plan-- bake cookies quickly, take some to a couple of neighbors, then head to my team leaders' house for dinner and a Christmas Eve service. 

One of the broken latches

That plan was quickly foiled when I opened my wallet I'd left home and found it emptied of cash. Uh oh.

The back door had been broken and put back in its place. My secondary cash storage was emptied also. A thief had come and gone sometime while I was away. 

Thankfully he only wanted local cash, and I didn't have nearly as much cash in my room as I normally would have. So on a scale of slight robberies to really bad ones, it wasn't terrible. All my electronics were undisturbed and my foreign currency was left as well. 

But the door was broken. And it's hard to feel secure in a house with a broken door.

Welding with eyes closed

My team leader came over and worked on the door. He tried a few things to make it more secure but we ended up with just a rope tying it in place until the door could be replaced with something stronger. "An iron door" we said to the landlady's brother, "We want something really strong."

He promised to take care of it, showing us an extra door that he had sitting in storage that could be remade to fit our needs. But to remake a metal door you have to find a workman. The first workman didn't have time. The second made time, and that time was today, but then the power was out. And it's hard to weld with no power.

Finally the power came and they returned. They put the door in, they welded on latches, they added a handle for pulling it closed.

Making necklaces on Christmas Eve

They investigated the door leading from the backyard to the street which had also been used by the thief. They planned and pounded and discussed-- how many latches, how many locks, how difficult it might be to navigate in and out of the doors once the work was finished, but, as they said before leaving, "better to be bothered but secure."

Indeed.