Back in May, I learned the hard way that Algiers airport parking is not the most secure, despite the swarms of cops all over the place. I opted to drive myself to the airport while traveling to Vienna for a long weekend instead of paying for the Embassy’s motorpool to take me. I knew several other Embassy folks who had left their cars there for a few days with no problem, and the whole point of getting a car in the first place was to afford me a modicum of independence in a place where security restrictions, lack of public transportation, and no sidewalks leaves a little to be desired in that particular area.
So. My trip to the airport was uneventful, ditto for the act of parking itself. Large lot, well-lit, plenty of police (as there are most everywhere, seemingly). So I locked the car, hopped a plane to Vienna and thought no more of it.
3 days later, I returned to Algiers at about 11:00 at night, glad I didn’t have to wait for the other Embassy staff who were on my plane to get their bags before motorpool took us all to our respective homes. Nope, I could jump in my car and head straight home. Or so I thought. As I approached my car, I punched the remote to unlock the doors. Nothing happened. “Huh,” I thought, “maybe the battery died in my remote”. If only. When I reached the car, I tried the door – unlocked. Uh oh. Then I saw that the glove box and every other compartment that could have been opened had been opened. Clearly someone had broken in. Bummer, but there wasn’t anything in there to steal, so I got in the car and tried to start it. Dead. Ugh.
Next step was to call our Embassy security folks, who came out to the airport at midnight to help deal with the situation. Airport police came over, and began an hours-long ordeal of examining the car, and asking me to recount what had happened again and again. They lifted the hood to discover someone had taken the battery and spark plugs (later we would discover that the ignition coils had also been sliced out). Awesome. After the police examined the car, someone decided to bring a forensics guy out to dust for fingerprints (no one thought of doing this before about 5 cops and several Embassy staff members had already gotten their fingerprints everywhere). Finally at about 2:30am, the police decided to call it a night. Some Embassy guys towed the car up to the temporary parking area (using nothing more than a long chain), and we got to go home and grab a few hours of sleep.
Next day, I had to return to the airport for more interviews (accompanied by a couple folks from our Embassy’s security section). Once again I had to recount the story of what I discovered when I returned to my car the night before, while a young cop took notes for his report. It seemed no one could understand the concept of jimmying a lock, so they basically didn’t believe me that I had locked the car. Super fun to not have the cops believe you.
Finally, after a good 2+ hours of recounting every detail of the story over and over again (by now I felt like they were investigating a murder with their level of intensity), we got to return to the Embassy. My car was towed again, using the same chain get-up as the night before, only this time they took it all the way from the airport to the Embassy (30 minute drive in a car that functions)! Fortunately they made it without destroying anything.
Then it was time to figure out how to get the damn thing fixed. My initial attempts to call a mechanic failed when he stopped calling me back. Fortunately, we have really nice guys in our motorpool section, so one of them was able to find a mechanic and set it up for me. (Another complicating issue is many people here do not speak French, only Algerian Arabic, which means I can’t communicate with them.) BUT, the car got towed to the mechanic’s workplace (using an actual tow truck this time, which was a good thing for my nerves), and after much hunting around on his part – apparently ignition coils for a Toyota Yaris are difficult to find – he FIXED it!!!
So. Happy ending, fascinating view into how the police works (although I suspect they wouldn’t have been so concerned about it had I not been a U.S. Embassy employee), and I got a functioning car back within a couple of weeks.
Lesson learned. So much for independence. Take motorpool to the airport.
Toto...We're Not In NYC Anymore 