Blogging from Ghana — Jay Dunne ’07

An Excerpt from “A Good Friday and a Bad Friday”

By Jay Dunne ‘07

At around noon that same day, I heard a loud ruckus outside the school library where I was working with a student. I turned to see a few students running across the assembly area toward the canteen just outside the campus grounds. As I walked out of the room, there were close to a hundred of our boys at the canteen.

I knew what it was before I got there. It was what I feared—Ewee. In the Fante language Ewee means thief. Now why does that cause me fear? Stealing in Ghana, or in Africa for that matter, is a pretty serious crime. The thing is, thieves aren’t turned over to the police. In fact, the police sometimes don’t ever hear about the incidents. When a thief is caught he faces mob justice, which usually ends up with the thief being beaten, humiliated and then lynched, drowned, or burned to death. The general justification for such brutal punishment is that to steal something that someone has worked their whole lives for is like taking that person’s life, so you should be killed for doing such a thing.

Anyway, the story is this. A young man was caught trying to steal a TV antennae in Anaji, where our school is located. The small mob stripped the man naked and beat him severely. They walked him down the road humiliating him in front of all who were present, until the thief ran toward our school for some vain hope of refuge. His accusers continued to beat and insult him outside our school grounds.

When I finally got to the scene, I was overcome with anger. There were my own students laughing, insulting, and encouraging the other men to beat the thief. One of the students ran up to me laughing like a jolly fool, “Hey Bro, look, look Eweeo!” I shoved him to the ground and started screaming at the tops of my lungs for the students to go inside. I don’t think they ever saw me that angry, because they all scattered and ran inside. One of the teachers came out behind me and helped me to get the rest of the boys back inside.

I turned back to see the thief crying and begging for his life, while bleeding all over. His accusers stood over him holding big sticks and shovels. They were shouting insults in the vernacular and slapping him across the face.

They wanted to kill him. I felt sick. I couldn’t stand it, so I stepped up to the accusers and begged them to let him go. At first they didn’t mind me at all; almost as if I wasn’t there. But, eventually they began to move away from the thief until there was only one man left. He still stood there holding his stick threatening the thief by slamming it on the bench behind where the thief was sitting. I looked at the man and told him he was sick.

All of the students were still watching from inside the campus. I had to do something for the young man. I took off my undershirt and gave it to the poor naked criminal. We made eye contact for about one second, before I turned and headed back inside the school.

As I walked back into the school, all of my students with impatient tones demanded to know why I would do such a thing. “Bro why would you give that man your shirt? He is a thief,” they demanded.

I was so bewildered by my mixture of rage and discouragement that I could hardly speak, but I did manage to answer their question. “Because I am a Christian.”

I don’t think they understood me. If you want to read more of Jay Dunne’s blogs about his year in Ghana go to http://www.holycrossghana.blogspot.com