The story of how I added “breaking and entering” to my laundry list of Peace Corps Accomplishments….
A few months back, I was walking home through the (hot) village around lunch time distracted in my usual fantasy about what I would be having for lunch. Alas, upon my arrival at the hut, not only was there was no grilled salmon waiting for me, there was another less delightful surprise. I had locked myself out of my hut.
How did you manage that, Lorato? Well it happened that I had left the skeleton key, which was what I used to lock the door from the inside at night, in the lock inside the door in the morning. I have a small padlock that I use to secure the deadbolt latch that Simon had installed for me on the outside of the door after my host family had been stealing from me using said skeleton key to open my door. The key for the small padlock was of course on the same key ring as the key which was still in the lock on the inside of the door. It was, as we say in Southern Africa a bit of a f*ck up.
Now I know myself, and I know that this is the type of shit that I’m generally known to do. As such I had tried to create a safety measure so that this very issue wouldn’t occur. I had attempted to preempt myself by putting a spare key up in the shade netting that creates the shady area on my “porch”. I instinctively reached for this key, smiling to myself in appreciation of my brilliance.
Which I immediately followed with a cursing of my stupidity. My constant use of what appeared to be the foolproof key plan, which entails clipping them to a karabiner so that I can always clip them to my purse, a bag or my person, so that I DON’T MISPLACE OR LOSE THEM, had recently caused just that to happen, in the process of clipping or unclipping the damn thing the keys had fallen off without me noticing. And thus the emergency replacement key had been promoted to the sole key to my hut.
Which was now on the other side of the door.
And the lunch clock was ticking.
So I quickly looked out into the yard at the gate, just to see if some Prince Charming slash Knight sort of fellow might instinctively know that his services were needed (it seems that Disney sponsored Damsel in Distress detector doesn’t quite pick up signal in Seronga. They must be in cahoots with the Orange and Mascom cellular networks.) and possibly pitched up outside my fence on his horse (with his locksmithing kit). No such luck.
Back to the old standby, making a plan.
I briefly stood back and assessed the situation. As I’ve said, I know myself and thus often arrange things in my life so that there is some emergency escape/contingency plan. I soon discovered that if I used my little pink mini leatherman (thank you thank you thank you K-Train-best gift EVER!!!) to unscrew the entirety of the door handle, I could probably shove something long and thin through the lock where the key was currently nestled. It would push the key out of the lock and the hopefully drop it just on the other side of the door. If I then pried a piece of the bottom of the door that was supposed to keep small creatures, like say, mice out (we all know exactly how well that has gone) and found another longer thin object through I could possibly hook the keys and pull them out, and thus unlock the door.
Which is what I did, in thirty minutes or less, just like the Dominoes Pizza guy (shit now I gotta add that one to the list of lunch fantasies). Who needs prince charming anyways?
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