It was late Tuesday night in Cape Town and we were staying with Andy, a friend of a friend. It was our first night with him and because we had arrived at his house late that evening, we had just enough time for a key exchange to the place we’d be sleeping for the next few days. Upon entering his house, I dropped my bag, got ready for bed and crawled into the sleeping bag which extended on the pullout sofa in the living room. I had drifted off to a deep sleep when I woke up to a knock on the door. ‘Was I imagining it?’ I asked myself half awake. ‘Could someone really be knocking on the front door at..,’ I looked at my watch, ’3:00am?’ I layed there for a bit before I heard the knock again, this time louder. The security light on the front porch would earily go on and off with the movement of the rapper outside. I tried to reason with myself; ‘maybe he’s just drunk and trying to find his way home.’ The knocking stopped for a few minutes until the security sensored light came on and suddenly the criminal outside was picking the locks. I was horrified. This must be a nightmare. I sat there numb thinking this guy was going to find a way in no matter how long it took. The picking continued as he got closer and closer to entering Andy’s house.  I laid absolutely still in my sleeping bag, a cold sweat collecting all over my body. ‘Should I wake up Andy?’ ‘Should I call the Cape Town police?’ ‘Should I just lay here hoping that he won’t notice the blob of sleeping bag with my body under it?’ Frozen by fear I chickened out and laid there deathly still praying that he would pass over me if or when he broke in. And suddenly, the lock clicked, and the door opened. ‘Oh dear god, please don’t let this be true,’ I muttered under my breath. The man walked slowly and quietly down the hall right to the living room. He stopped for a second before moving on into the kitchen and toward the back room. I sat there breathing shallowly under my sleeping bag while the intruder disappeared into the back room and became silent. ‘What is he doing?’ I thought to myself. I laid there like this for the next 45 minutes not hearing another sound. ‘Maybe he snuck out the back window?’ I thought. I laid there as attentive as possible until I slowly drifted into a restless light sleep. I woke up the next morning paranoid by what had happened the night before. Do I dare go to the bathroom by the back room?

Later on, I told Andy what had happened and it was then that I found out that he has a flatmate who lives in the back room. Apparently, he works late in the restaurant business and was trying to get into his own house. I felt like such a fool. The ironic thing is, we locked him out of his own house. To make matters worse, I almost called the police on him. After hearing the new info, I sat there thinking ‘ well at least it pays to be a chicken sometimes.’