Lost Phone, But Gain Knowledge

I was on a 3-month visit to West Africa for evaluating some work and holiday also.

One day, I was walking home and someone grabbed my mobile phone from my hands and ran! I went immediately to the police station and had to bribe the police officer in order to obtain a police report so I could report the stolen phone to my insurance company.

As the policewoman was writing the report, her senior came in, screamed at her and left – and she burst into tears. It turned out that the policewoman was in trouble because she hadn’t done something that she was supposed to do. I tried to comfort the policewoman and, in the end, the policewoman told me why she hadn’t done the thing she was supposed to; she was tired from having to do a second job ‘because being a policewoman wasn’t paying her enough money to feed her family because the government wasn’t paying enough because of the fact that they didn’t have enough money in taxes because of the fact that China owned the diamond mines and they didn’t have any natural resources and blah, blah, blah.

I came to the conclusion that the police system was collapsing due to the fact that public workers are not being paid enough to keep them honest to do their jobs in the first place and I ended up developing this brilliant picture of the way that the country worked and suddenly it all clicked. It all just came together just because some guy had stolen my phone!