no mercy for thieves

Here in East Africa, we have gotten used to a compound wall, a locked gate, barbed wire and having a guard around 24/7. The "day guard" also functions as house help. Three days a week she's at our place, three days a week she's at our neighbours'. Her name is Eunice, a woman in her forties from the northern region of Uganda, close to the Sudanese border. She comes to our home and through the day she does our laundry, which is washed by hand, and ironing (you have to iron everything here, or else risk having mango flies lay eggs under your skin).

Today I was baking cookies and she was sitting in the living room ironing. We started chatting about various things. She told me about a man who was caught stealing near her home. The short version: the mob gathered, the man was beaten to death, jerry cans of fuel were poured on him, his body was lit on fire.

"If you have stolen, or even if you are caught attempting ..." Eunice shook her head. "My dear, your life will be over in seconds."

I asked if the police ever intervened. "They do," she said, "But if they are delayed, if they arrive too late, there is nothing they can do. It happens so quickly. When you have many people, one gathers wood, one gets fuel, one is beating ..."

I'd heard of this before. One day, on a boda ride home, Isaac even saw a man being chased by an angry mob. In that case, the traffic police were nearby and did intervene in time.

The longer I'm here, the more I realize how little I know and how much I don't understand. I like my world in black and white; here, things get gray pretty quickly.

I told Eunice that I could never imagine lighting anyone on fire.

"Thieves are not people," she said. "Somebody is working hard for years, and a thief just takes. If you work slow, you will go very far. But a thief wants things quickly. God has given you everything; your feet, your eyes, your hands. You should labor!"

She went on to remind me about an incident she had told me about shortly after we arrived here. Last spring, Eunice was attacked on her way home from work, in her own neighbourhood, and was robbed of what little money she had on her (about $4). She was strangled by a man and thought she was going to die; even now, she refuses to walk around at night.

As we talked, even through the language barrier she could sense my criticism of this form of justice. She agreed that it was not right, but she did try to make me understand.

"People are tired! They are tired of thieves. People themselves are suffering," she tapped her chest, trying to explain. "They carry anger with them. Even after I was tortured, my neighbour said, 'Eh! I wish I had seen the thief, the one who tortured you. I wish I had set upon him. Even had he killed me, at least one of us would have left this world.'"

How does a country wracked with desperate poverty, and lacking a reliable police force, regulate itself? Even with such fierce consequences, people still regularly take the risk and try to steal. If judgment wasn't so swift and so severe, wouldn't everything be stolen?

I remember when I had just arrived in Ghana in 2009, my first experience in Africa. My professor, a Ghanaian herself, slipped me a card with a name and phone number on it. "If you have any problems or ever feel unsafe, I have a cousin in the army that you can call," she assured me. I was shocked; it is so foreign to me to rely on your own connections, to provide your own physical barriers around your home, to pay for your own guard, because there is no public system protecting you.

I tried to explain to Eunice that at home, if I have a problem, I call 9-1-1 and even if I do not know the person, someone comes to help me. I know there are cynics who bemoan the police system in Canada, who whine about injustices or discrimination. I am glad for those cynics, I am glad for a free press that can print stories criticizing the government. But at the end of the day, being born in Canada is like winning the global lottery. Criticize the government, question the police, but please don't make ridiculous comparisons to other parts of the world. There is no comparison.