During my third year of teaching Woodworking and Technical Drawing in Swaziland, one night someone climbed onto the roof of my classroom, stomped out the fiberglass skylight, and jumped down into the classroom, went into the closet where my sets of woodworking tools were stored, and stole a complete set of tools. Just one set. A jack plane, tenon saw, 4 various sized chisels, a mallet, a screwdriver, a marking gauge, a sliding bevel, a tape measure, and a crosscut saw. I was pretty sure it was one of my students, since who else would know about the tools?

Fortunately I had several pieces of translucent fiberglass that were for a community project I was working on, and I climbed onto the roof and used them to repair the damage, so that rain, or other thieves could not get into the shop. I told the headmaster, and he drove his car to a shop about a mile away that had a generator and a radio telephone, and reported the robbery to the police. It was before the advent of cell phones.

At that time, the police for my area were in Nsoko, about 20 miles away. The station was built next to the prison there. It was also where the nearest post office was. Tacked on to the side of the cop shop. After having seen the police response in the capitol city when a man murdered another man right in front of me, (see my story Community Justice) I was not confident that reporting the robbery would have much effect.

The police officers showed up the next day, crawled on to the roof, looked around in my shop, found no evidence, asked me a bunch of questions, and were generally very officious about everything. Then they drove away, and I figured that was it.

I forgot about it. My next visit to town, the following weekend, after doing work at the Peace Corps office, and collecting my monthly pay, I stopped into the Technical College, and bought a new set of tools to replace the stolen ones. I had classes of 25 boys sharing the 10, now 9, sets of tools, and they needed to be replaced right away. It cost me half my $200 pay to buy them.

Life went on, I talked to my classes, telling them about the theft, and encouraging any that might have information as to who had stolen the tools to come and talk to me, or report it to the police. No one did, and I figured that was that.

A month and a half later, the cops came to my school and told me that they had caught the thief en flagrante delicto, with the tools hidden in his house. It was Lionel, one of my toughest students, who several months previously, I had caught walking out of class with a chisel in his pants pocket. Sigh. He must have really wanted to be able to do some woodworking on his own. It made me sad. The police had put him in the prison, and they told me that I would have to testify in Swazi National Court when his case came on the docket, maybe in a month or so. Great.

The day came for his trial, and I took the bus into town to the court building. I was pretty nervous. Swazi National Court was conducted, of course, in siSwati, a language that I had some facility in the basic greetings and small talk, but was not anything like fluent, and in particular the verb tenses were not my forte. SiSwati is not made anything like English. Not even a little. Unfortunately, when I arrived, I was told that they did not have an interpreter to help me with my testimony. Oh great. I was on my own.

Court started up, and they called the case before a really scary looking serious judge. As the trial went on, and I was waiting to be called to testify, I could barely follow what was being said. Finally my time to shine came up, and I was seated in the witness box for testifying, and sworn in, with my hand on the Bible and all that stuff. I gave my name as Sipho Maseko, the name my host family had given me when I first got there, and that I used as my real name.

That engendered a whole discussion on how did I have a Swazi name, being a white man, and what was my real name? I have to admit, even though I did not let my delight show on my face, that I knew where this would go. The reason I used Maseko as my name with everybody was because in the first few days of my tenure there as a teacher, I had realized that nobody could pronounce my American last name, Birchall. SiSwati does not have the letter R in it, and Swazis found Birchall unpronounceable. So I had switched to Maseko, which everybody could pronounce and relate to. I gave my American name to the Court. Both the Judge and the prosecutor tried to repeat it and couldn’t, after several tries, so the Judge ruled, unhappily, to use Maseko.

I immediately raised my hand, before anybody else could say anything, and just that action startled the judge, and he grumpily said “Yebo?” (yes?). I felt that I had to tell him that my siSwati was not very good, but I would do my best. He was underwhelmed by my disclaimer, and frowned at me.

The lawyer, I guess he was the prosecutor, took up questioning me. I got that he wanted me to tell who I was, and what I knew about the theft. I took a deep breath, and did my best, with my marginal siSwati to tell my story. The Judge kept interrupting me, to ask me to repeat myself, because he was having trouble understanding me. He was really grouchy about it.

At one point, I asked the judge if he spoke English, so I could tell my story more clearly. He seemed offended by that, and lectured me, in siSwati, about how it was Swazi National Court, and would be conducted in siSwati, by God, and that was the way it was. I was really trying, but my lack of facility with tenses was confusing everybody. And did I mention that I was so nervous? The judge kept asking me if what I was saying was in the past or the present. They kept me up there for 45 minutes, going over and over things, and becoming more frustrated as it went on. I was sweating profusely. 

Finally they had wrung out of me every bit of testimony I was able to provide, and they let me go. I was shaking as I walked out of the courthouse, feeling like I had just barely escaped from being thrown in the clink for being dumb.

As it turned out, Lionel got a year in prison for his theft.  I never saw him again. A couple weeks later a cop came by the school and returned the tools in question, so I now had 11 complete sets of tools. That doesn’t seem like much, but it went a long way towards reducing the squabbling over tools in my classes.

You can never change what the universe brings your way, but you can always decide what you will do about it. My solution to the vagaries of life is to always do my best to weigh the options and make as sound a decision as I am able to, with the knowledge that I have at that time. I have taught that to girls for 20 years. And I move on, and don’t beat myself up with hindsight.

Who is perfect? Certainly not me. I yam what I yam.

Be your best you. 

Love your neighbor. 

Be of service to others. 

Never give up.