NGUETCHEWE, Cameroon - Father Georges Vandenbeusch's glasses are still lying abandoned on his desk, a reminder of his sudden kidnapping three days ago near Cameroon's border with Nigeria by Islamist group Boko Haram.
"He was never without them," said Sister Francoise, a nun who worked with Vandenbeusch in the Nguetchewe parish, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Nigerian border.
"We don't know how he is, wherever he is. We don't know if he is cold, if he has enough food or if he's being treated properly."
Despite the kidnapping, claimed by banned Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, Sister Francoise said she did not want to leave her parishioners.
"We are scared, but we are staying for the people," she said.
"We don't know what they will decide," she said of her superiors, who will make the final decision, but "I hope and think we will stay".
Colombian priest Germain Mazo from another parish on the Nigerian border said the kidnapping had come as "a real shock".
"We are very surprised," he said. "We knew the situation in Nigeria was deteriorating but we did not imagine such a thing could happen."
Cameroon 'knew Boko Haram planning attacks'
Mazo said he feared he too could be targeted after Vandenbeusch's abduction, but that he remained confident in the state's security measures.
Since the kidnapping, security has been tightened. The French foreign ministry said it had designated the area, from where seven members of a French family were kidnapped by Boko Haram in February, as a dangerous zone prone to militancy and kidnappings.
A dozen soldiers from the special rapid intervention battalion (BIR), an elite unit in the Cameroonian army, now make regular patrols in the village and its surroundings.
Two soldiers are stationed in the Nguetchewe parish itself, to protect the religious community.
At Cameroon's request, France has deployed two French police officers normally based in Chad to assist in the police investigation into the kidnapping.
Military and police sources said Cameroon was aware that Boko Haram, which said on Friday it was holding the French priest, was planning to kidnap Westerners in the far north.
"We don't have any problem getting information about such plans, but when it is passed on to the relevant authorities nothing is done," said one BIR officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Boko Haram, an Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group blamed for a string of deadly attacks since 2009 in an insurgency in northern Nigeria, has in the past called for the creation of an Islamic state in Nigeria.
It is believed to be made up of many different factions, some of them hardcore Islamists who would resist any concessions to Nigeria's secular government.
The priest's abduction came nearly a year after the kidnap of Francis Collomp, a 63-year-old French engineer who escaped his captors on Sunday and has now returned to France.
In the priest's modest Nguetchewe apartment, the trace of his kidnappers is still visible - his bedroom door is broken and a safe lies near the door.
"The kidnappers dragged it there. That's not its usual place," said Sister Francoise, who has many unanswered questions - did the armed men enter the room to force the priest to open the safe? Did they attack him before they took him away?
The nun says that Vandenbeusch's suitcase was found on the way to Nigeria, "hidden among millet stalks".
"It was empty. We don't know what was inside apart from a few chequebooks that were found," she said.
On Sunday, around 2,000 people attended a mass given in honour of the priest at a church in Nguetchewe, which is in a predominantly Muslim area.
"Every day, we pray. We miss him," a sad-looking young parish worker named Philippe Yaya told AFP after the service.