To Catch a Thief - A follow up to the Guard and the Gardener

Over the past few days I’ve read two blog entries from fellow foreigners in Ghana. Both concern the serious betrayal and incredulousness they have felt as sentimental things have been stolen from under their noses by the Ghanaians they know and trust. My close friend was also over a couple days ago and told me the same thing. The most disturbing aspect of these stories is that each person had demonstrated time and time again that they were happy to share and if asked would give the shirt off their backs for the people they share their personal space with.

The first blog entry I’m referring to was by Barb – an American married to a Ghanaian, living in Ghana with her husband and kids. The second entry was by Wes, an American secondary school student who is spending a school year in a village in Ghana.

Both people are quite open-minded and trusting.

Both have the very best of intentions in Ghana, and neither have flaunted wealth nor treated their Ghanaian families with anything less than respect and love. Yet both are finding themselves reeling at the ability of the people around them to steal and lie, straight faced, with no remorse.

Both stories are so sadly familiar to me. They reminded me of the story I posted a year and a half ago, regarding the ongoing theft of diesel from our house by our trusted gardener Eric and the guard who represented a highly respected and trusted security company. During that whole fiasco our gardener defiantly protested the accusations and insisted he was innocent. He counter accused our cook, who has since been let go.

The whole thing was sad for me. He had been someone I had a soft spot for, and I commonly gave him cash advances which we both knew would never be paid back, as well as clothes, food etc etc etc. Once he was gone the letters started. First was a letter in his broken and pleading English, asking for his job and housing back. He insisted that God would redeem him and one day we’d regret accusing him. Next came a letter from a lawyer’s office in Accra, threatening us with legal action for dismissal without cause. That we laughed off, but I took the time to write to the lawyer to explain that we had witnesses etc. and they backed off.

A few months later Eric came back with a vengeance, waiting at our gate as we left for work in the mornings and leaving letters with the (new) guard. These letters continued with the theme that he saw us as his family, as his mother and father, and that he would never have betrayed us in the way we accused him. He wrote that he had been praying every day that we would one day see the truth of his innocence and let him return.

Now in our relationship, JW is the softie at heart. One of the letters got to him and he called for Eric to come and see him. The next week Eric was back. Smiling as ever, ready and willing to help with anything, assuring us it had all been an ugly misunderstanding with the evil, jealous woman who had been our cook. He assured us God would bless us for seeing the truth and giving him this new chance.

I was skeptical, given what I’ve seen happen in Ghana, but yet I went along with it, and to this day, he is back at the job and staying in a room at the back. I still give him little presents etc.

Yet a week after his return a friend of mine who has a gardener that had filled in at my house during our months without Eric, casually mentioned that Eric had admitted to the other gardener that he had indeed been stealing the diesel, with the guard, just as we’d suspected, for over 2 years. He however told the guy he was happy we’d taken him back and wouldn’t do that again…

So where is the deterrent to stealing again? How does a Christian who references God and the bible and uses his religion as a tool, then live with the lies? Is it simply a matter of poverty?

As both Wes and Barb's stories corroborate, this is not always the case... Is it a cultural acceptance of dishonesty? Why is it ok to betray people who trust you? Where is the remorse? How can we expect anything less than corruption at a national level when this is the behaviour you find inside homes? Who is brave enough to talk about it, to confront it? To change the culture that expects and condones it?

It’s a case of honesty in Ghana – or lack there of…

Foiled armed robbery fuels my day

When I woke up this morning I felt inspired to blog about something, I just didn’t quite know what it was yet. This happens often and inevitably something random will jog my memory about something I have been wanting to ramble about forever…Today I didn’t need to search my endless vault of trivialities... today something happened.

At 10am or so, cold coffee remnants (decaf of course in this year of living healthily), swirling around in our mugs, pouring over a presentation on a tight deadline, we were interrupted by two high pitched whirlwinds – one after another they scurried into the office, breathless, “ARMED ROBBERS! DOWNSTAIRS!!!”

Well that was something to tear us away from the world of power point and get some adrenalin pumping! We jumped up and ran to the window. The voices trailed on with the rest of the story, “The police have caught them! The tried to rob the bank but many police came and chased them into the empty building next door!” Indeed, downstairs, outside looked like a hub of activity.


There were random police vehicles and police with various uniforms (in Ghana they use what they have, resulting in many types, colours and styles of police uniform and even more diverse – the hats, ranging from Bahamian rounded tall white hats to army-like berets). The police were all carrying their weapons – obsolete rifles of varying size and description as well. It all looked a bit disorganized. We couldn’t tell who the armed robbers were, as they had apparently been plucked one by one from the corners of the building next door and thrown in a police jeep. There were a few jeeps dotted around. We couldn’t tell which vehicles they had arrived in either as there were many vehicles parked in different directions, amongst the people in the yard next door.

Well no one was shot and the fear and excitement almost died down, until someone came up the stairs to tell us that these were the very same thieves who successfully robbed another bank yesterday, and in the process they had shot a policeman in both legs. He later bled to death. They had also made off with two police issued guns and shot them off in every direction, shooting three innocent bystanders on the road. The two vehicles they had escaped in yesterday matched perfectly with two surrounded in the yard downstairs – a Mercedes and an unmarked Golf.

So it turns out we did have something to be frightened about, considering these guys were not playing around. They had intercepted a money delivery truck at the other bank and may have been set to do the same here, without caution or concern for human life. Who knew when we moved into our brand new offices above a prominent bank on a main street in Accra, we'd be this close to an 'almost' armed robbery?!

Gives you a chill when you consider the many errands you run every day… I could have been walking down into the parking lot to leave in the car, or even walking down the road to the store, and just been in the wrong place at the wrong time!

The most shocking aspect of this story is that the police actually showed up in considerable force! Normally you have to pay the taxi fare for a police officer to attend to an emergency! Normally you can’t reach the police station on phone because they have not paid their phone bill and it is cut off (both of these scenarios I have experienced).

Just as in my earlier post about being clamped – I am impressed that things are happening in a more professional and accountable fashion.

Having said that however, they released the 2008 Afrobarometer report recently, and sadly over 75% of Ghana’s population perceives the government to be corrupt in general. The police service rated even higher at 89%!!! These figures are up significantly from the last report in 2005.

Where is Ghana going? Are we safe??