Alarm Systems

There is a constant apprehension, if unmentioned and yet overstated, of “them”. You can call them “Opportunists”, “Desperate”, or just “Unfortunate” but the sad fact is, you always walk, drive, sleep, and even eat with the silent reminders that this society is used to their pervasive influence. Every night before we go to bed, we go through the house checking each window, locking each door, to make sure that “they” don’t come in.

Zimbabwe has something like 90% unemployment, and in a stratified society without a middle class, the poor are really poor and everyone else can be considered really rich by comparison. Add the unemployment to dismal economic times, shortage of food, and classic African politics, and you have a group of people that are willing to steal to survive. The best example of this was when the guy smashed through the car window two years ago and stole my computer bag my first night in Zim. He came out of nowhere, and practically disappeared in the long grass along the road. He probably isn’t a mean guy, just desperate.

The first challenge to security lies in the location of the property. The outer edge of the Lane’s property borders a “vlei” (Flay) or an open undeveloped field with similar dry tall grass. They are supposedly very dangerous to walk through alone as squatters live there, and opportunists often hide there. Surrounding the property line is an electric fence with multiple wires “that just give a shock and set off an alarm inside. Its illegal to have anything lethal in Zimbabwe,” Kaela’s Grandpa told me. I may have mentioned this before but on the side of the property that runs along the road outside their house, there is a ten foot wall with a gate that only opens from a button inside the house. The thing is, when there isn’t power, we have to go and slide it open manually- which means other people can too.



Which brings me to the alarm system. On the perimeter of the house lies several heat and motion sensors that when turned on, report to a central console in Bob and Mandy’s (Mikaela’s parents’) room when something is detected. See the picture above of the front of the house with the motion sensor in the corner. Floodlights that illuminate the entire yard likewise are controlled from their bedroom. The house is divided into two sections: the bedrooms and the rest of the house (kitchen, living room, TV room, etc etc). Dividing the two sections is a small passage way that has 2 doors that are locked at night. While each room has a sensor in it, the house is armed so that at night we can freely walk in between the bedrooms (which open only into a common hallway). But the moment we step foot into the passageway to the rest of the house, the alarm goes off.



Additionally each of the windows are covered with reinforced steel grating (above), so that there isn’t a space larger than an 8.5 X 11 paper through which a person could crawl through. Aside from the windows, each of the bolted solid wood doors facing the outside has a separate steel counterpart with multiple padlocks.

Thus, each night before we go to bed, we go through “the routine”. We begin in the “rest of the house” (Living room and Kitchen) close all the curtains, and check that all the windows and doors are locked. We then move into the bedroom area, close the curtains, lock the windows as well, and set the alarm.

As a side note, how then do we have ventilation if the house is completely closed? Evidently, it was law at some point to have ventilation grates put into the walls of each outward facing wall. So imagine building a wall with bricks and replacing some with a metal grate. In each of the rooms of the Harare homes I’ve been in, there are several of these grates facing outward. So how do you keep the heating inside? In a climate with perfect temperatures, there isn’t a need for insulated walls or central air or heating- so no worries on the energy costs here!

Should the alarm go off, Bob immediately gets a phone call from a security company asking if they need to send an armed guard. (If we call the police, they often say that they don’t have petrol and need you to pick them up first). The guard can be here in 2 minutes if there is a problem. Plus, Kaela’s Grandpa who lives next door fought in the Rhodesian Bush War…

Sleeping under these conditions at first can be a bit unnerving. Every time the dogs bark, you listen. Every creak in the house, you listen. Kaela the other night was worried because she thought she heard saws at work and had a hard time sleeping.
Yes, there is a real threat (Roro and Grandpa had an intruder the other night, and Mikaela has a friend that was tied up in her own home once), but after a while, after I think about the 10 ft walls, electric fences, alarms, steel doors, dogs, padlocks, the Rhodesian War Veteran and armed support. . .

I’m not so worried anymore.