Sidiku Buare, Myself and the Car Thieves

By Dr. Samuel Adjei Sarfo

Over three weeks ago, my fate and that of Sidiku Buare converged: we both had our trucks stolen by strangers we trusted too much!

According to Joy news report on November 4, 2014, the former MUSIGA President had advertised that his Toyota Rav4 was for sale. Soon thereafter, a call came from a supposedly interested buyer who said he was sending his auto mechanic ahead to see the car and test its condi¬tion. When the said 'mechanic' arrived at Alhaji Buari’s residence, both of them decided to go on a test drive. Alhaji Buari was the one driving while the 'mechanic' sat in the passenger seat. After a while, the ‘mechanic’ requested that he also be allowed to drive the car so as to test its actual condition. Alhaji therefore parked but left the ignition on and got down so that they could change seats; but the 'mechanic', on taking over the driver's seat, sped off with the car before Alhaji Buari could take his seat. There is as yet no report that Alhaji has found his truck.

In my case, I was giving a ride to two ladies when I stopped at a gas station to buy a drink. Like Sidiku Buare, I left the car engine running in order to protect the passengers from the freezing cold. I found that the store was closed, and when I turned back to return to my car, I saw one of the ladies in the driver’s seat with a smile plastered on her face. She made a quick and dangerous reverse with my 2010 Mercury Mountaineer luxury SUV and sped off like a harridan. For a moment, I thought it was all a dream. I therefore blinked twice or thrice and pinched myself several times to wake up from the nightmare. But everything was real: my truck was gone together with my I-phones and keys.

Those who have had their cars stolen will tell you that the initial feeling is like that of a stygian pit in your stomach, to be followed by an extreme anger and self-doubt about the integrity of your sanity: Why me? I walked a mile to the nearest gas station and called the police, and after I made a report to the officer, he gave me a lift home. For the next five days, I drove around a large swathe of the city of Austin looking for my car. I had a tracking system that enabled me to detect where the car was parked, but that system was fairly outmoded, and the location information was available only after a couple of hours. Then there was this national stolen car data system which actually helped only after one’s car had been involved in some incident or accident. And the number of cars in the city of Austin, the capital of Texas, might as well be ten times the number of all the vehicles in the whole of Ghana; so the idea that I was going to find my truck was virtually absent, and a certain friend never tired of assuring me that my car was gone for good.

Six days after, I was driving in the small town of Hutto in search of my truck when I had a call from the Austin Police Department: my truck had been recovered. That morning, I had reviewed the tracking record and discovered that the car had been driven on a toll road near Hutto, and I had therefore concluded that it could possibly be in that city. But it was found over forty miles away down south of Austin. The truck had been involved in a hit and run accident, and a vigilant police officer had later stopped it and arrested the culprits. Luckily, apart from the stench of cocaine and weed and a few scratches here and there, the truck was in a fairly good shape.

In the next few days, I was interviewed by the local TV station and others who formulated their own theories about what actually happened. But the more predictable albeit annoying thing in this whole experience is the foreseeable habit of those with twenty-twenty hindsight who will certainly impugn the integrity of the wisdom of Sidiku Buare and me. To these wiseacres, it is unthinkable that we left our car engines running in trust of strangers. But how many people wake up thinking that their cars will be stolen? And if you think that strangers are the only ones that can make off with your car, consider this: five years ago when I visited Ghana, I entrusted my car key to a cousin who offered to wash my car for me. The next thing I knew, this cousin went on a joy ride with the car and crashed it……. So must the conventional logic then be that we should keep our car keys hidden in the Marianna Trench as we go about our daily lives?

When the local TV interviewer asked me whether I would ever again leave my car running with passengers in it, she was surprised when I answered “yes”. And here is why, “We can never allow the bad nuts to transform us into their own image.” Assuming that today, I am thinking of the comfort of my passengers so I leave my car running and somebody takes off with it, so I decide that from hereon, I will never leave my car running with passengers in it. So in the freezing cold or sweltering heat, I switch off my engine and shut off the heater or air-conditioner in order to attend to emergency situations……Or as a lawyer, I free a prisoner on bond who refuses to pay for my services (as many of them indeed do) and I decide to take my fees up front and allow people to rot in jail until I am paid……Or somebody calls me “nigger” and I fly into a rage and punch him on the nose and end up in jail…..I can go on and on, but what will be happening to my humanity? I am merely allowing myself to be transformed from a human being to a human beast, a veritable puppet in the hands of my adversaries. This phenomenon is what I call the transformative power of the enemy.

This is a term I coined to describe the situation where individuals, in desperate desire to be reactive and vindictive, become carbon copies and puppets in the hands of their enemies. In other words, they become as bad as their enemies because they do exactly what their enemies do; and they are puppets in the hands of their enemies because their enemies control their emotions by triggering their negative behavior. This reactive phenomenon may well be at the cornerstone of our negative personalities, that we are daily made different by the bad nuts, instead of looking to be transformed by the very best models within humanity. After all, isn’t it what we say all the time that we should seek examples from the best in our society? And why must Sidiku Buare and I change what we do right merely because hardened criminals and drug junkies made off with our vehicles?

The evil ones amongst us will have their just dessert for whatever they do wrong, because there is no iota of evil that we do that will go unpunished in the natural scheme of life. Ignorance enables people to come under the illusion that they have a field day in the concoction of their evil ways, but the history of the world consistently prescribes a natural repercussion of evil for evil and the most good for our righteous acts. But we allow the evil doers to triumph when their acts transform us to their ways. For our own spiritual victory, we must remain strong and steadfast even in the face of the greatest wrongs done to us by those we fully trust.

Samuel Adjei Sarfo, a general legal practitioner, is resident in the city of Austin, Texas, USA. This article first appeared in his New Statesman column “Thoughts of a Native Son”. You can email him at sarfoadjei@yahoo.com