Cape to Cairo

I decided I’m going to write about a story my cousins and I agreed we wouldn’t mention until we returned to the US, for fear of parental freak-out (or something along those lines). But now that we’re back, I’m happy to say it’s fair game - in my mind anyway. 

To set the scene: we’re back in Cape Town at the beginning of our journey. Pat has just arrived the day before feeling a bit jet-lagged, and I myself am quite exhausted, opting for sleep over a night out on Long Street. Robb, however, does not share our sentiments, and decides at 10:30pm that he’s going to head out. He gets up, changes his shirt, tells me he’s going down to the 24hour internet cafe and then will “go from there”. 

Fair enough, Pat and I both think, as we sink into our dorm beds and pass out.

I wake up relatively early the next morning (still adjusting to South Africa time) and notice, to my surprise, the dorm bed beneath me is conspicuously empty. I had sworn I heard some shuffling in the room at about 3am and figured it was Robb, so to see his bed untouched worries me a bit. 

“Uh… hey Pat? Have you seen Robb?”

“…No I haven’t. Does he have his phone on him? Can you text him?” 

I send out a simple “Hey Robb, where are you?” and wait for a reply. 

Nothing.

Pat and I start talking about the previous night, about what Robb could have done, about where he could be, where he could have gone, all the while getting increasingly more worried. Had we been at home a situation like this would have been totally normal. But when you’re traveling, in a place you don’t know very well with people you don’t know surrounding you, things are different. And to not know where a traveling companion had been for an entire night, in a city in Africa no less, and not hear from them the next morning is quite troubling indeed. 

Finally a ding from my phone. “I’m at a friend’s house. Will be coming back tomorrow.” 

Pat and I look at each other. What the hell friend does Robb have in Cape Town? And tomorrow? What does that mean? Getting slightly more nervous, we discuss further. That doesn’t sound like Robb Pat tells me, he’d call, he’d be more specific, he’d do something. He wouldn’t just disappear. 

Pat takes my phone. “‘I’m going to call him”. He dials, the phone rings twice, it sounds like it’s picked up, but then *shuffle* *shuffle* *click* the phone hangs up. 

Strange. 

Pat calls a second time. It goes straight to voicemail. The phone has been shut off. 

Fear rushes through both of us. 

“I’m going to look for him” Pat tells me, throwing on clothes. “Stay here if he comes back, I’ll give you a call as soon as I can.” 

I take a shower, get dressed, and then pace on the balcony of the backpackers for 30 minutes, all the while filled with this unshakeable feeling of dread. Did someone mug him and take his phone? Did he get beat up? Did something worse occur? How could something like this happen so early into the trip? Why did he go out alone? Why did he not tell us where he was going?

I try calling Robb one more time out of desperation. Voicemail. More pacing. 

My phone rings about 45 minutes later. “Sarah, what shirt was Robb wearing last night”

“…I don’t remember. His Irelands one? Why?” 

“I’m at the police station filing a report right now”

Oh god. Are we really doing this? Is this really happening?

“I have to finish this report and then I’ll head back.”

This can’t be happening. 

Pat returns about 20 minutes later, telling me about how he was followed all the way to the police station by several aggressive beggars down various alleys (you don’t walk alone in Cape Town), and we talk about what to do next, our faces solemn.

We can wait for the police to do something, I guess. The man who was working at the internet cafe when Robb was allegedly there wont be back till 4pm so we can’t ask him any questions until then. Our options are slim.

We decide we can’t do nothing, so we head down to the internet cafe instead to see if we can hack into Robb’s e-mail to check if he even made it to the internet cafe, unsure of what else we could possibly do. 

We play around with Robb’s accounts for a while (Pat finally figures out the password), guess that he had to have been on the computer the previous night, try and figure out for how long, and then, finally, three hours after this whole ordeal began, my phone rings. It’s Robb. 

“Robb, where are you” I say curtly, exasperated. 

“Hey Sarah! I’m heading back over that way now. I stayed out till like 4am and then crashed at this guy’s place. I’m getting a cab” 

Resisting the urge to reach my hands through the phone and strangle him, I simply say “get back as soon as you can” and hang up. Pat and I look at each other. “I’m going to kill him” I say. “Go right ahead” he responds, and we slowly make our way back to the backpackers. 

While the experience was a terrifying one, ultimately I think it was beneficial for us. It made us set boundaries and rules that we never thought to do before, it made us realize that we can’t act like we do at home while in a foreign country, and it made us understand just how interdependent we have to be in our actions here, or really abroad anywhere. After beating Robb up a little bit (joke) and proclaiming he had to buy us breakfast (but not really following through with it) we were able to move on with our day, and our trip as a whole. But I must say, we acted differently after that. More aware, more safe.

Or in other words: Lesson learned.