I WAS A THIEF
We had a nice time that evening at the fellowship. My friend from school days had visited and ministered and I felt the tingling sensation of something different. I was grateful to God for the meeting. We walked back home and while he went ahead to make dinner, I set to work on the laptops I had collected that night. I had a lot of work to do and I needed to keep a vigil so I could complete it. It was Friday night.
I went into the room and brought out my ASUS ultra-book. It was a one-of-a-kind laptop. None of my friends around really knew I had such a laptop. It was only for serious work. It came with a dual startup button. A built in surface operating system and its battery life was… wow! I bought it off a friend and even at that it was still exorbitant. This night I needed it for some serious work. I laid all the laptops on the rug and started attending to them one after the other. My friend later joined me and we worked and talked.
We worked into the night. At about 2:00 am. I heard a
thud like the sound of someone drop into the compound. I motioned to him to be still and I went into the room to peep at the gate and true to what I heard. I saw a young man moving towards one of the flats. I ran out of the room and motioned to him to close the laptops as I went ahead to put off the lights in the parlour. Just then we heard someone from outside say “this house, this house” and before we could make a move they had entered the house. Robbers were in our compound and we were under attack. It was not a time to think or even know what to do.
We were ordered to lie down in the room. I watched as I saw a dirty shovel hit my friend at the back and he fell on the bed. The other thief came to me, he was slim and looked underfed. He asked me where the money was and before I could respond, he had slapped me from behind. I momentarily lost my senses for I would have descended on him but luckily for me I regained them (senses) in an instant, thanks to the gun I saw in his hands. I don’t know what would have happened if I had resisted him or tried to defend myself. I wasn’t ready to prove it the gun was loaded.
In about twenty (20) minutes they were through. They had robbed the four flats in the compound and they left just as they came. No, no, no. they left heavier and richer than they came. I came out of the bedroom and when I got to the parlour I knew that being admitted in a psychiatric hospital didn’t always need due process. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I saw my rug as bare as it was when I first laid it many months ago. I looked again and it was obvious that this wasn’t a nightmare. All the laptops were gone.
I wasn’t speechless. I heard myself chanting. It wasn’t a war song or a victory rhyme. I couldn’t say the category it fell into but I kept repeating “They can’t take my laptops, they can’t take my laptops”. It was a very painful sight. I went round the compound trying to rouse my neighbours but fear wouldn’t let them respond to my call. I left the compound to the nearest family house I could get to and the occupants after sympathizing with me, began to pray. I wasn’t in the mood for the prayer but I tarried till the end. Some even wept along. No, not along. I wasn’t weeping. I was mesmerized, I was traumatized. Yes that’s what I was.
I returned to the compound to meet my neighbours and we kept celebrating our survival and sympathizing with one another over our loss. It even got to the point that we started joking about how we were engulfed in fear and the shameful things we did out of fear. I got back into the house and I knew that life would no longer be the same for me. I lost five (5) laptops, five (5) phones, my wristwatch, my office bag and all its contents. I lost a great deal. I had been working on two programs and the collection date was that Saturday, now there were all gone. All the laptops I had to repair were gone. The ASUS was gone too. That hurt and still hurts.
I wouldn’t tell you what happened at the police station by dawn. You might laugh me to scorn or curse a government worker under your breath. The days that followed were terrible. We lived in fear and any knock was a signal indicator to increase my heartbeat and I seriously wasn’t alone. We, the neighbours confessed to one another how we survived the few weeks that followed. I couldn’t get it off my mind, how young men would have the effrontery to enter a compound and cart away such loot without even a second thought? They were downright greedy but so is every thief. I know because I was one before!
I might have been petty but I stole and I did it well. Who do you think stole the pack of cabin biscuits for which the whole students were punished way back in JSS1? Who picked the library book and made it pass the librarian in broad daylight? I stole from the fridge in bits when I was little and yes I also went to the kitchen when it was dark. I learnt to tiptoe, I lied to cover my tracks and I had this innocent look that never betrayed me. I was a good thief because I was hardly caught. In fact I never remember being caught. I knew how to brake padlock cupboards, open iron boxes and tamper with carefully locked and zipped bags and I replaced them exactly as if no one touched them. I knew it was bad but I did it anyway and went scot free. I was good at it and I grew more confident until one blessed day I witnessed an excited crowd.
He was a hostel mate. All he stole was bread as I heard and a crowd had gathered around him and they chanted “I am a thief o, I am a thief, I am a rotten banana….bla-bla-bla”. I couldn’t stand the embarrassment on his behalf and I wondered if they knew that someone else had stolen food of more value. I kept thinking of how he was paraded round the school. I knew I would die of shame in such a situation. I was still very shy then and I couldn’t imagine being in the middle of such known faces and being forced to sing a ruthless song and tarnish an image I was yet to build. I decided to change my stealing pattern but slowly I lost the knack to steal. I converted the ability to something I would write about later.
The thieves I saw that night could have started just like me and become so bold and needy and lazy and greedy that they could now take advantage of unsuspecting residents with full confidence.
No habit develops overnight, be it good or bad. Time breeds every growth and what we sow, we duly reap. I thank God he gave me enough grace to stop those little acts back then else it could have been me robbing somewhere else.
Taking what does not belong to one is stealing, food, clothes, time, love, opportunities, cash, ideas whatever it is. Stealing is stealing and everything grows with time or dies with time. I steal watch myself closely so that I don’t fall into the temptation of modifying theft in anyway.
Living with the trauma of the robbery still sends shivers down my spine. I probably have sent shivers down the young spines of the boys that never found their cabin biscuits and cornflakes where they left them and still met their lockers and boxes intact. It may be nothing compared to what I went through but it doesn’t count in the long run for he that takes what is not his is called a thief.
Eph 4:28 “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” KJV
Exo 20:15 “Do not steal.”