Ah, the sun is rising on another beautiful morning in Swaziland. The air is warming up, the vans carrying ministry partners are pulling into the compound, the multiple cell phones are ringing, the Swazis are yelling about something in Siswati, Charlotte and I are dressed and ready to take a local gogo to the hospital for treatment, and we pull up in front of the grocery store.
It turns out one of the calls was serious, and the yelling wasn’t the usual trivial back- and- forth banter. Apparently, someone stole all the food from one of the Care Points.
Let me repeat that: someone stole all the food from one of the Care Points.
Who does that??
As we pulled into the Care Point, we realized that the criminal had broken the lock off and replaced it carefully enough to make the door look sealed and secure. Mapile went into a rant about how this guy had ten years’ experience stealing Care Point food, explaining to Charlotte and me how the community wanted him found out. After delivering the new food, we drove off to pick up the waiting gogo, passing all of the children walking to the Care Point, blissfully unaware that their food had been stolen and there would be no meal for them that day.
It’s easy for me to rain judgment on this renegade, the sick and twisted mind who would dare to steal the only meals a starving child will get for the next week, but I have to remember that whoever did it probably has his own family to care for, multiple mouths to feed, and no way of providing for the people he loves. At the same time, he knows that if he steals the food from a Care Point, it will be (and was) immediately replaced.
There’s a similar problem at the Care Points, with the gogos who make the food stealing it, too, as many of the regular children are now in school and no longer coming to the Care Points, creating an overflow of pop (corn maize) and beans. Again, the snap judgment is easy here: there’s extra, why can’t they take it and give their families two meals a day instead of one?
The problem is that this behavior is encouraging all of the things we’re working hard to combat here: secrecy, jealousy, stealing.
It’s easy for me to look at this situation from my American point of view, raised in a culture where there’s more than enough food, and the only people who steal are Robin Hood type characters, stealing from the rich to save the poor. And, in a sense, this is what’s happening: someone is stealing from a Care Point where the food will be replenished in order to feed people who don’t have access to food.
But, unlike Disney’s version of Robin Hood, where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, where the world is black and white and ends with Robin Hood saving the day and even getting the girl, real life isn’t quite as clean as that- it involves lots of good people, all trying to do their best with what they have. The cast of characters include people who mess up sometimes, and bad things happen even to the protagonists.
Stealing food doesn’t make you Robin Hood any more than being hungry gives you the right to steal. Being American doesn’t give me the right to judge any more than being white makes my prayers more valuable. Knowing what’s right doesn’t make me do it anymore than going on a mission’s trip makes me save the world.
We’re all walking this journey together, and all I can do in moments like this is to pray, pray that I have the wisdom and discernment to know how to act rightly, pray that the people stealing food are caught, and pray that Swaziland becomes a place where the men step up, protect and provide for their families, and see the cycle of injustice stopped once and for all.
