Kidnapping in Ingushetia - March 2006

i haven't written you in some time, but something happened last night that merits one of the old womble missives. am currently down in nazran, ingushetia, where our main office is located. it's a stereotypical caucasus backwater town, NGO central, and world vision has a team house which i share with an aussie, a bosnian, and a malawian. it's a big beautiful house. we live on the ground floor and second floor, while the basement is occupied by the landlord and his family. they have their own separate entrance, facilities, etc. so it's nothing like a naivasha homestay. they're a traditional ingush family, greeting us with salams-alekum, inviting us for tea when we both know they don't really mean it, etc.

anyway, they have a 16 year old daughter and two sons, aged 14 and 11. when we came home last night, there were several cars parked outside, so figured they were having some family get together, maybe some mourning anniversary. the mother, lyuba, came up to borrow some chairs, and i asked her what was up. given my poor russian, had no idea what she was talking about, but knew it had something to do with her daughter. i'm thinking, "maybe it's like some debutante thing... her "coming of age" party, or maybe she aced some entrance exam and will get to go to college.

turns out she was kidnapped! now here's the kicker... in the north caucasus, there's a tradition whereby if a guy likes a girl, he kidnaps her, and then his family and friends go to the home of the girl who was kidnapped, assure them she's okay, and try to encourage the family that fred's a good guy really, and they should consider letting him marry their daughter. little marietta is safe, probably being consoled by the female relatives of fred. but she's petrified. i mean, this girl, we know her. we see her when we come home from work... she giggles trying to practice her english with us. she's like our collective adopted niece. and we're pissed! as tim, our aussie, said, it's like when you're at a party, and there's this girl that you sort of like, not really, but then when you find out she's seeing this jerk, it stirs something up inside you, a gnawing at your gut. not that you want to date her, but HIM?? c'mon.

so last night, we're devising plans to rescue this girl. we've got guards... they've got guns. we're watching season 3 of the hit tv show 24 with kiefer sutherland, so we're all in jack bauer mode. we can rescue this girl (and maybe save ingushetia from the deadly cordilla virus at the same time). the problem is, her family, deep down inside, they probably sanction this abduction. hell, lyuba the mother was probably kidnapped too when she was young (you take a look at her husband abukar, and think, "yeah, he must've kidnapped her..." abukar who coughs up phlegm every morning at 6:30 at a decibel level i can hear it two storeys up... lyuba surely wakes up every morning thinking, my knight in shining armor... hack hack, spittle spittle).

but we love marietta, and have big plans for her. she can have the life her mother never had... finish school, learn english, get a job, own a mp3 player. in their house are all these ingush men in sheepskin hats, drinking chai, mumbling and nodding, going through the motions of telling abukar that fred will be a good son-in-law. he comes from good stock, honorable stock. he has cows.

and the four of us are upstaris, wringing our hands, thinking how cool would it be if we took our guards, found out where they were holding marietta, burst in with ingush soldiers, kicked some local ingush ass, grabbed marietta, saying, "it's okay, we're here to protect you."

of course this would violate the ingush traditional code, likely bring shame on abukar and his family, make enemies of fred, his friends, his family, his extended clan, and result in our being beheaded. i've got a R&R coming up the first of april - sharm el sheikh. being kidnapped and murdered would suck.

anyway, that's what's shaking in this little neck of the woods... our surrogate niece was kidnapped, we've got way too much adrenaline watching 24, and the weekend is almost here.