Hijack!

It was a Sunday night and I had just got back from a weekend at a private game reserve near the Kruger with my girlfriend. We'd had a great weekend and I even witnessed my first kill - a lioness taking a wildebeest on her own, at night.

I was driving to the office for a late-night work session - changes on vlive are sometimes done at night. Driving along Shakespeare road, the lights of an oncoming car suddenly moved into my lane. I slowed down and stopped, thinking WTF?!? I had no inkling there was anything amiss at this point. The car came to a stop right in front of me. Next thing I know a guy leaps out of the passenger door and points a gun right at me. Oh SHIT! First thing I did was put the car in reverse - and stalled. Good one. So next I thought let me just get my stuff out of the boot, they can take the car. So I got out and went round to the back but the guys caught me up and I soon had a gun barrel pressing against me. Next thing I know I was face down on the ground. I tossed my cellphone into the darkness, hoping they wouldn't hang around to look for it, and I could retrieve it after they had gone. A car had approached and stopped while I was on the ground, but when they saw what was going on, they stuck the car in reverse and disappeared. 10 seconds later I was on my own. I had no cellphone, no money, and no way of contacting anyone. I didn't know any of my friends' phone numbers. I began to run towards home (it's a 5 minute walk), trying to flag down passing cars. Several went past without stopping. Eventually one turned around and stopped to ask if I was ok. They took me to my girlfriend's house, where she was sleeping on the sofa. 30 minutes of banging on the window and shouting later, I succeeded in rousing her, and luckily she had a spare car and a set of keys for my place.

The stuff I lost included:
Apple Macbook
iPhone
2 passports
Nikon D90 plus all my lenses
a £6000 Nikon lens I'd hired for the weekend
All the photos from the lion kill
1 rental car

luckily I wasn't touched - until I noticed a bruise on my back. Perfectly round - from the gun barrel where I must have been whacked to the ground. And thinking back, it's probably lucky I didn't reverse away because they probably would have shot at me, and might have hit me.