Consequences of Stealing

Three days to Christmas last month, Mum phoned a certain woman and requested her to come clean our mansion in preparation for the festive season during which we were to receive some visitors. The woman honored Mum's request and brought with her another younger woman who I understand was her daughter.

Before they began cleaning our mansion, the women negotiated with Mum how much they would charge for their services. After they finally agreed on a fair amount, Mum ordered them to clean our living room as well as our kitchen and the master bedroom where my parents sleep.

At first, Dad objected to the women going beyond the living room. But when Mum insisted that they clean the kitchen and the master bedroom, Dad gave ground to Mum's orders. The women then proceeded to freely enter our mansion as they cleaned some of its room.

Later on in the night of that day the women cleaned our mansion, I heard Dad grouse that they had stolen some of our plates. Apparently, it was our farmhand who spotted them with the plates as they were leaving our home.

When I went to the kitchen, I saw that the number of plates in the cupboard looked fewer than usual. It did therefore seem like the women had walked off with some of our plates.

The following day, my elder brother Bob Njinju, who happened to have seen the women when he visited us that evening they were cleaning our mansion, demanded that they be summoned and reproached for stealing from us. But my parents thought it wise to leave them alone and never let them set foot on our home again, something I agreed with though I didn't say.

As I sat on my desk that night I heard Dad grouse about the women stealing plates from us, my mind flashed back to the years 2007 and 2008 when I used to belong to a certain choir at All Saints' Cathedral in Nairobi. Because I was a hick from the village back then, I used to feel painfully shy when interacting with my fellow choristers who were townies.

And wa! Some of the choristers mistook my shyness for ulterior motives. They thought I was taking advantage of my association with the choir to pilfer music materials from the cathedral.

One Thursday night as I was leaving the cathedral after choir practice, a guard stopped me at the gate and inspected my bag. He didn't find anything incriminating in the bag. And I surmise he had acted on orders from the choristers who suspected I was pilfering materials from the cathedral.

On another Thursday night, the cathedral music director, who had never spoken to me before, approached me after choir practice and told me something as if she already knew me. I could tell from her remarks that she had been briefed about my possible engagement in petty larceny.

Despite the suspicions the choristers had on me, I was a good young man back then. I got out of bed every morning, read regularly, assisted in domestic chores and attended church every Sunday. And I was polite to people, at least most of the time. My only weakness was a lack of good social skills.

It wasn't until August 2008 that I stopped attending church and backslided in my Christian faith by oversleeping, behaving abnormally and missing classes at the university. And later on in 2010, I added to my list of increasing sins the behavior of sending weird messages to friends and strangers. Otherwise in the years 2007 and 2008 when some fellow choristers at All Saints' Cathedral were suspicious of me, I was a good young man lacking in social graces.

Deficient though I was in social graces back in 2007 and 2008, I was smart enough to discern some of my fellow choristers were suspicious of me. So I was keen not to carry away music books from the cathedral without permission.

To tell you the truth, I came to feel bitter at the way the choristers treated me with suspicion. But upon reflecting on the way the women who came to clean our mansion last month ended up stealing plates from us, I am now thinking the choristers had some merit in being suspicious of me.

For walking off with our plates, the women will never again get another job to clean our mansion and cook meals as they used to do before. And that, my beloved reader, is one of the consequences of stealing. Let us therefore avoid stealing as the Bible implores us in Exodus 20:15. Ciao!

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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on consequences of stealing, you might also enjoy another one on "Thefts I Recall From My Boyhood Days" which I wrote several years ago. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.