Africa Journal #10: Letter to the thief

Africa Journal #10: Letter to the thief

Sir,

I want to share a grievance with you. On March 24th, 2012 at approximately 5:00 PM in Mengo, Kampala, Uganda, you stole a 15” MacBook Pro from me. Please forgive the drama and the formality, but this computer was actually quite dear to me. Upon the sale of my motorcycle, my Apple computer rose to a) being my most integral worldly possession and b) my most valuable world possession. Granted it was over four years old and not as sprite as it once was, but it was a phenomenal computer and I had spent a lot of time on those beautiful silver backlit keys. It is always embarrassing to be sentimental about an object, especially when the item is, by design, cold and utilitarian, but in some ways I loved it.

You see, sir, these past four years my life has endured many changes and that computer was the peripheral to the world that allowed me to journal the feelings, fears, and hopes accompanying those changes. There are over 300 pages of journals and poetry (and even more of research) on its hard drive. Unless you’re a voyeur of a certain kind, none of these deeply personal musing will mean anything to you, but they mean a lot to me. If it is possible to “bleed on the pages” of a personal memoir or lament, then I have done as close a thing on the pages of my journal documents on my hard drive. In its absence I see the many ways my computer was a connection to my life. This is, of course, not without its sadness since it is arguable that a majority of my social interaction is via a relatively small laptop screen. But like you, I am a product and participant of/in my society. The loss of a computer that is the mainstay device of one’s life is actually an acute loss to one’s ability to function in modern life. I do not mean to patronize you as I explain what this loss means to me. You may be very well aware of what you took and the meaning it may have; I do not know. To be honest, I wish you’d just robbed me. I could have just given you the money. Yes, it could have been that I would have hurt you severely, but you should have taken the chance because it would have been one for one and I’ve been through worse here in Africa. But no, you just walked into a home when someone was in the back room washing clothes and took one small nondescript item: my macbook pro.

To be honest, and here you will learn the most about me, the worst thing that you did is destroy my belief that my deep sadness and anger were valid emotions. But how could they be? Granted, it seems reasonable to lament the loss of something dear to you (no matter the reason) all things being equal. But that’s just it. My computer was not stolen in the United States where it is incredibly common to have an expensive Apple laptop. It was stolen in a country in which I find myself in the top 1%, in a world that I am already in the 1%. Sure it is sad to lose a laptop (and I’m much more than sad), but “sad” barely describes that average Ugandan’s lot in life. What you have done is, in absolute terms, “wrong”, but when I see the world that you live in and the multitude and nefarious reasons you were born into poverty that is almost nonexistent in the country I’m from, I can say that the baseline for your entire life is “wrong.” Forces outside of each of our control placed my life as a white, educated, male in the West and your life as (likely) a black, uneducated, male in the Global South/Majority World. Purely numbers wise, it was for more likely for a person to end up in your shoes than mine. But it is highly unlikely that you are poor because of anything besides of where you were born. The chances of you having a college degree, world-travel, protection from a largely functioning justice system, and access to decent health care are almost nil. I’ve had access to almost all of those my entire life. It is not “fair” that I should have those things and you should not. What is more, I know that I could not have much of what I have without the exploitation of people in your socioeconomic class and the exploitation of your forefathers. The affluence of the West is partially built on the exploitation of people who, because of where they were born, do not have recourse. I am keenly aware of this as I easily move throughout your society with the grease that is my inherent relative affluence. I know that if I get in trouble here my country will advocate for me and levy its unparalleled influence on my behalf. I know that if I need money, there is a host of affluent friends who can wire me money in moments. I am aware of all these things. I have seen with wide-open eyes what devastating poverty can do to a person, to a society, and especially to notions of volition. I have lost the ability to judge a woman who prostitutes herself to feed her children. I have wrestled with every ethical system there is and I have my opinions on many of them, but the ethic that is sacrificial love like that I cannot categorize. Devastating poverty is a force that is unrelenting in its life-taking ability. I do not know you, but I am willing to bet you know more about it than I ever can or will.

I do not know why you took my computer. Obviously there are obvious reasons such as “money” but we all make money for different reasons, some more noble than others. Perhaps the 500,000 shillings or so you’ll likely make from the sale of my computer will be used to buy cheap banana beer or even marijuana. Maybe it will just allow you to live for a little while in a place where 500k goes a long way. But maybe you have a daughter who is HIV+. It is not statistically likely, but I would not be shocked. The HIV rate is easily 20 times higher here than in the United States; probably 100 times higher. That’s not because your society is more immoral than my own, but because of the debilitating and compounding effects of poverty. They are legion. I do not deny that sin is an integral part of this drama, but when I no longer sin I will caste that stone. If your daughter does, in fact, have HIV, I am sorry. I know that antiretroviral drugs, which can theoretically allow an infected person to live as long as a non-infected person, are extremely expensive. Yes, I know that many of them are paid for by the US’ PEPFAR program, but your corrupt civil servants have syphoned off most of the money paid into that fund and so you do not have what you most need. Granted, I do not know, but in a world without justice, I can no longer be surprised when I see gross evil like that go unchallenged. So in my hypothetical you need to steal to make the money it takes to provide the life-giving drugs your daughter needs. I know this is likely not the case you face, but the mere fact that it is very plausible says enough: You and I were not born on equal footing and if I were in your proverbial shoes I would do exactly as you have done. Not because it is “rational” per se, but because I would love my daughter just as you would love yours. I do not deny you your own agency in making life decisions. Poverty does not erase agency or volition. You made a choice to take something that was not rightfully yours--and that was a choice that ultimately has negative moral implications (unless you’ve been reading J.S. Mill lately).

So resources are not distributed even remotely equally across the world. I have benefitted much from the largesse of my society, the exploitation of others, and—by the grace of God—the relatively safe and just public arena I inhabit. To say that I earned all that I have would be a misnomer of the highest order! What arrogance it would take to believe that I have earned that which I currently have before it too returns to dust. But more dangerous that arrogance would be the belief that I am entitled to that which I temporarily possess. And here lies my dilemma.

That computer, ultimately, does not belong to me. It has been entrusted to me in the way that oxygen, friendship, and the beating of my heart have been entrusted to me. But all of these things, although I can make a humanist case for their being intrinsically being tied to my “self”, I believe ultimately belong to God. He gives and takes away. I will not try to pretend that I sometimes do not take issue with this reality because I do. You may not identify with what I say here, but these past two years have been years of profound loss for me. No so much in the material sense although there is plenty of that too, but in other realms. I have characterized this past season as a season of loss, because it has been here that I have come face to face with the fundamental injustice of this world that underlies our desperate and pitiful attempts to have orderly, fair, and predictable lives. I have seen and experienced things that can never be made just. They cannot be made right on this earth and have destroyed any notion that true justice, as God describes, is even possible on this earth. It has taken a long time to divorce my concepts of justice letting Rawls and Locke and the liberal Western tradition have one concept, and have the truth belong to God. I am not against liberal legal systems; I am merely noting that the justice that God demands and desires and will someday usher in has never been fully realized on earth. The civil rights movement was absolutely a movement towards justice, but it was not justice realized. You know all about injustice I’m sure. Maybe you grew up on the streets and saw police officers rape with impunity. Justice would seem like a far-off thing at that moment. Maybe the woman you saw being raped was your mother. Justice would have died for you that day. I wish we could sit down and talk about justice and what it would look like to you, because I am sure I could learn a lot from what you’ve seen and experienced. But we never will. We never will because to you I exist not as a person with hopes and dreams (some of which recorded on a computer), but as a target—a mzungu with money. And you’re likely just another Ugandan I see on the street corner of Bakuli underneath, say, the shadow of the Gadhafi Mosque. In a different life we may have been friends. I do not know you, but I like to believe that I am free to be without enemies in this life. I have found hatred to be a tiring, fruitless thing.

So I do not hate you. You have no idea what I have lost when you took something as innocuous as a computer from me. You do not see that my anger and fury still have nowhere to go and so I point them inward. This is now a part of your story, not just mine. For in a broken world we cannot contain the effects and consequences of sin. They linger, woven into the fabric of time and space, effecting things in far-reaching ways the butterfly effect only hints at. The immediate effects may be mundane, like my inability to communicate with my loved ones or write email updates. Yet the far reaching effects may be the toppling of governments. We should never see ourselves as so powerless as to view our sin and personal and benign. When you take from another you both sin and give God a space to do a work of redemption. I have a right to be angry at you. I have a right to feel legitimately harmed by you. But I know that you do too. I would not say you were being unjust if you levied equal venom and ire at a world so unjust as the one you and I inhabit. We are a tragic generation you and I. I born to a democracy that has taught me to kill and you to a cleptocracy that has taught you to steal. Justice, then, is far from us.

I need to say something now. You’ve deeply hurt me and unleashed something in me that you will not suffer; I will suffer. I just want you to know that. It seems petty from a distance, but you’ve not walked a mile in my shoes (and, granted, I’ve not walked a mile in your shoes either). This event is far more symbolic and indicative than you know. And yet this sorry excuse for “life” will go on. Obviously I do not make such choices, for I would run life much differently than God. That’s why I’m not God. We can all be thankful for that. Your choices though, sir, have made me face many things—mostly that entitlement that I am guaranteed anything past death in this life. I am not. All my ideas and passions and desires will one day return to dust from whence they came. I will be forgotten in this life having left a mark that only God will be able to judge. It is the same lot for you, my friend. And so in eternity we are equals. It is only here, separated by arbitrary and artificial social hierarchies that neither of us conceived in which we are forever pitted against one another. So today I will give you something that cannot be demanded, just given. I am giving you forgiveness because I recognize that the differences between us are ultimately infinitesimally small and that if God’s justice were to be brought down I may be found less just than you. Maybe not, but in God’s eyes it is possible if not probable. And it matters not because we would both be found woefully inadequate and we both need grace. So I forgive you. This is extended without condition. I hope there is a moment when your sin finds you out and you become acquainted with justice and would then be brought to repentance. But my end of this does not require your sentiments at all.

In truth, I forgive you partially for selfish reasons. I hope in doing what I know is mercy reminiscent of that which has been given to me I may learn how to forgive the person I hate the most, the person I blame for most of what I’ve experienced, the person I’ve plotted to kill since I can remember: me. I have become the enemy of myself and have saved my most brutal invectives for no one but myself for the failures that, in my mind, characterize my life. Forgiving myself would be a profound release for the way I psychologically deal with the fundamental injustice of life is to see where I fit in the picture and tear myself to pieces, regaining that sense of control that powerless people like myself often desire.

I forgive you and wash my hands of any desire to get retribution. Despite my deep hurt, fury, and relative financial ruin I believe the words I have said…

…I only endeavor now to feel them.

Goodbye,

Dan

Ps. Thanks friends for your prayers, support, and offers of financial support. I love you all.