The One That Got Away

It's time to fill in the rest of the story and close the book on this tale.

As I said in yesterday's post, the police believed it was an inside job and other expats have said that 9 out of 10 times it is a disgruntled employee. That said, the only person of interest was our bone-idle houseboy, Latif, who worked for us for the first two months we had the house. We asked him to leave when we got a maid in December and he disappeared from our lives. Or so we thought.

Because it turns out that when we were away in Lombok he let himself into the house but thankfully Yuni was there. It is likely that he planned to burgle us then and there but blessed Yuni stopped him. It's a shame that she didn't think to tell us when we got back so we could have done something about the locks.

Now jump forward to last week when we had water supply problems and we asked our landlord for help. Our friend Latif arrived to give surly instructions to Yuni about what taps to turn to get the reserve tank flowing. A couple of days later he was back because we still didn't have enough pressure to run the shower or fill the bath, and he grudgingly told us that the pump (which previously he'd said only pumps water to from the lower reserve to the upper tank) actually pressurises the system. What a star you are Latif.

And now the final chapter:

We had a visit from our land lord's local agent, Maureen, today we told us that Latif had caught a plane to Jakarta yesterday. The police had been tipped off by his brother but for reasons unknown to us they were not able to apprehend him. They must have talked to him at some point because we were told he would be back in 2 weeks. Yeah right Latif, you're home and dry now mate. So our property and the perpetrator have done a flit. We've given up on getting any of it back.

This has left us with a very nasty taste in our mouths. The quicker we get out of here the better. We are thinking about finding a house in a secure compound and living like the rest of the expat population, but on my wage I'd have to spend 100% of my monthly earnings just to achieve a roof over our heads. So if anyone wants to do a quick whip round...