Some Meditations on Camera Snatching

To the ladrones who stole my camera…

I wonder what you were thinking as you got away. “That was a close one!” or “What a sucker!!!!” or “Wonder how much this baby will fetch?” or (do I dare ever wonder?) “She seemed like a nice girl. I actually feel a little bad.”

Did you think about me at all? Me, and not just my camera? Did you wonder what I would do? How long would I stand dumbstruck on the sidewalk? Would I cry? Would I go running to the police? Would I cancel my vacation and head straight home, overwhelmed by fear and disappointment?

I’m sure you knew I’d be scared… scared and alone in this huge city of La Paz. Stripped not so much of my camera but of my sense of peace and security. Stripped of my confidence in navigating a solo trip through Bolivia. You knew I’d be shaken and upset, angry with myself and horrified that I’d been tricked. You knew… but did you care at all?

Did you immediately erase the photos on my memory card or did you pause and look at them, even just for a moment? Did you see the pictures of my smiling students and realize I must be a teacher? Were you curious as to how I came to work and live in South America? Did you see the photos of my family’s visit only a month earlier? Could you imagine my phone call to them and their reaction – their concern, their sense of helplessness, their relief that it was only a camera and that nothing worse had happened to their daughter? Did you think of your children (if you have any?) and imagine them being in a similar situation, scammed by grown adults and left sobbing hysterically on the sidewalk of a strange city? Did you see the photos of the first six days of my vacation in Bolivia and think to yourself, “What a spoiled, rich kid, traveling all over our country with her nice camera. Serves her right.”?

What you couldn’t see from those pictures were the months of saving up money here and there to afford my trip, the months of dreaming of this vacation, the stacks of guide books in my room that I poured over each day to plan out my two week trip. What you couldn’t see from just looking at my camera were the years of deliberation and desire, the research and the saving, and, finally, the decision to use my graduation money to treat myself to the camera I’d been drooling over.  Did you see past the camera and my United States citizenship and all the assumptions you must have had about me based solely on those facts?

In short – did you humanize me at all?

Because I humanized you.

I imagined that you have hungry children at home that will be fed for months with the money my camera fetches. I imagined a sick mother or a dying uncle and the overwhelming medical expenses that must be paid. I thought (hoped, even) that this robbery will keep your daughters in school and saved from being sold as domestic servants or prostituted by their own father. I told myself that this life – of swindling, lying, and deceiving – is the only life you’ve ever known, that you were raised on the streets and never offered the chance at a real, honest future.   

I thought, perhaps, this is a Slumdog Millionaire situation and you’re forced to hand over each day’s earnings to a violent boss who threatens you and your family. Or maybe there’s a whole band of thieves that comes together each night to split the wealth from the day. Or you’re a modern day Robin Hood who views your line of work as a form of social justice and wealth redistribution.

I gave you stories and motivations and excuses, even though I know there’s a small chance that these are actually true, because in imagining the difficult or desperate circumstances of your life that must drive you to thievery, I began to forgive you.

To the two Bolivian women who helped me as I stood sobbing on the sidewalk…

Thank you. Your kindness means more than you can possibly know. You hugged me, rubbed my back, comforted me, listened to my story, and walked me to the police station. Your presence calmed me down and helped me make sense of what had happened. You told me, apologetically and sadly, “Some people are just bad people.”

And while that may, unfortunately, be true, your words and actions (and the helpfulness and generosity of so many people that I encountered during the rest of my vacation) reinforced what I’ve always believed: that most people are good people.

And, so, instead of buying the first bus ticket home and leaving Bolivia scared and angry, I was determined to finish the vacation I had planned. Because I refuse to let three thieves ruin my opinion of an entire nation. Because I refuse to be suspicious and assume the worst of people. Because, though caution and awareness are important, so is trust. Because, as Anne Frank wrote so eloquently (and I know her situation differs from mine tremendously), “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.”    

On losing a camera…

Ultimately, it’s just a thing. A chunk of metal and plastic and glass. Things I can live without. Things can be replaced. Things shouldn’t control your life or mandate your mood or define who you are.

Along with my community, I’ve spent the last year living under the guiding principle of “Simple Living,” one of the four core values of our organization. We live without cell phones, internet in our house, a washing machine, a microwave, or cars. We live in a humble home and share everything we have with one another. We read and reflect on the writings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Thich Nhat Hahn, and Richard Rohr – authors who expound upon the spiritual and psychological benefits we receive when we free ourselves from the clutches of materialism and end our dependency on the things that surround us. We say that, though we already live very simply, we can always simplify more. Often this doesn’t mean so much trying to do without some tangible thing but rather eliminating the attachment or the imagined need we have for that item.

So this camera snatching has not just relieved me of a material possession, I’ve also been forced to face my dependency on or attachment to the object. I thought about my camera as a status symbol and how good I felt touting it around. I thought about how proud I was of some of the pictures I’d taken and how I wanted to show them off on Facebook, either because the picture was artistically cool or because I thought I looked really awesome in it. I realized my tendency to start snapping photos before I’d actually taken the time to appreciate my surroundings. I realized that sometimes I would spend twenty minutes trying to adjust the camera settings so that I could perfectly capture the interesting texture and colorful striations on a rock formation instead of taking one or two photos and then spending the time staring across the valley at all the incredible rock formations glowing in the light of the setting sun. Knowing that I was returning home without photos, my journal entries became more lyrical, colorful, and descriptive as I tried to describe what made me smile, what filled me with awe, and what I wanted to remember forever.    

I managed just fine without a camera, as I’m sure anyone in my situation would. Resilience and adaptation are universal, so I don’t mean to imply that my year of “simple living” training prepared me for the disappointment and sadness of the camera robbery. And when I got home, I had my old, point-and-shoot camera waiting for me, so I’m not living without a camera entirely (yes, I brought two cameras to Peru, which isn’t exactly living simply).

I may appear to be super Zen, “everything happens for a reason”, “I don’t need material possessions to make me happy” and all “Kumbayah” about the whole situation, but trust me, it’s taking some serious effort on my part. For every one moment of calmness and clarity in this whole situation I have at least three more moments of thinking, “WTF. This sucks!” And no matter how much I read about cultivating inner peace by detaching myself from material possessions and no matter how much I reflect with my community about why we should take cold showers during the summer, the memory of the camera snatching is always going to seriously piss me off.

Sorry, St. Ignatius, I’m not quite ready yet renounce my inheritance, give away my possessions, strip down entirely, give my clothes to a beggar, and lay down my sword and armor before a statue of the Virgin Mary. I’m still a work in progress.