Hello, um, Security?

I wonder just what it means to be “toughing it out.” As a foreign woman, there seems to be a lot of pressure to maintain your Western independence, to be able to be out and about unaccompanied. I am in awe of my friends who bicycle late at night alone, and persist despite harassment issues. I get to ride my motorbike and zoom past heckles and cat calls. I’ve only had someone follow me once and I think I may have accidentally motorbike flirted (or perhaps that’s extending the benefit of the doubt...).
I’ve written before about the distinct divide between NGO neighborhoods and my own, and often envied their more care free communities. Alternatively, those neighborhoods make for profitable pockets of foreigners and much of the crime and harassment I hear about happens there. I was told today there’s a specific street where the majority of foreigner-targeted theft occurs. It’s a block from the military base. The thief can run back to the safety of the compound if he gets caught.
I really have enjoyed having a women’s house this year. In contrast to my predominately male house last year, it’s well decorated, mostly clean, and we employ a gardener. We can have women friends over and with that big wall in the back, even lounge in a tank top. But I still get scared at night when those branches are rustling. I can’t help thinking against all my Western-born independence that I wish there was a man around the house. Maybe then the neighbors would stop taking our mangos.