Carnet Caper

By Sal Beisly in Bolivia

I was in a café going to pay my bill when I suddenly realised I couldn’t find my wallet!

I knew it hadn’t fallen out of my bag and I had no idea how on earth it could have been stolen. The problem was my carnet, my Bolivian identification. It’d take hours at immigration and lots of dosh to get a replacement.

Amazingly, after Gregg came to pay my bill and returned home, there was our landlady’s son with my carnet (official resident’s document)! He had seen some students at university passing it around and noticed my picture on it. He told Gregg he said to the students something like, “Hey, where’d you get that? That’s the chick who lives upstairs from us!” The students claimed to have found it and demanded payment for it. But he just grabbed it and ran.

We think it was miraculous that my carnet ended up at the university right where our landlady’s son was!

Later a friend told me it must have been stolen on the bus beforehand, but I couldn’t think how. Then I remembered someone had rained money down on me and while I was picking the money up and giving it back to him a partner must have gone through my bag. Apparently it’s a typical scam but it hadn’t occurred to me. We are now extremely thankful and feel very looked after.

The Beislys are working with the impoverished youth in El Alto, Bolivia.

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