The Bad Samaritan

Chapter Seventeen

77 The Bad Samaritan Chapter Seventeen N ext morning, the controller came from Tumba and broke the seal and gave Esole a six months probation period. Esole reopened the gates of his businesses with suppressed happiness. On the National Day he bagged FCFA 2,600,000 net interest. “Beri, you are wonderful. We are gradually regaining what we lost in the hands of those fools.” “That is business. In a few weeks we shall do so. So, you see, lion eat goat, goat eat grass.” “That’s bad philosophy.” “Bad, but it works.” “It works but it must be discouraged.” “Perhaps when God will decide to recreate the world.” “Beri, it seems you are dipped in corruption. You don’t seem to care anything about it.” “Please Sir, I care much about corruption. Corruption is like a wound on the forehead. The patient can’t hide it in the same way as a leopard can’t hide its black spots. Neither can the patient say they hate it. They can’t because they have no choice. They just have to accommodate it as the leopard does its black spots.” “What are you saying? You suggest that we live with corruption and do nothing about it?” “Corruption is part and parcel of us. It is fashioned by the top brass of our society and filters downward in degrees of sophistication. So, it is among the top brass, the middle class and the downtrodden of Ewawan society. In fact, the top brass are giving it a whitewashed touch, a hypocritical phase, a phase with the smile of a guillotine. It is worse among the downtrodden because it involves survival.” 78 Charles Alobwed’Epie “So if the top brass is corrupt everybody else must be corrupt?” “Sir, do you forget that where the needle passes there the thread passes? Can water be clean downstream when there is a flood upstream?” “Why not? Have you never heard of sedimentation and self- filtration?” “The process of sedimentation and self-filtration covers unbelievable distances – too long to be of any significance in what we are discussing. Corruption is not only in Ewawa. It is everywhere. The difference between corruption in Ewawa and elsewhere is that in Ewawa, it is total. Everybody is adjusting themselves in it because there is no way out.” “I think you are over generalizing corruption in our country. You seem not to endow anybody with a degree of goodness.” “The only people one would have thought would be exemplary are even worse. Go to the churches and see how church authorities handle alms and thanksgiving money. Money given to the Almighty God, the omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent in His sanctuary is time and again reported missing, missing, in the millions of francs CFA, missing in the hands of those who of their own accord were ordained or dedicated servants of the Most High. Now ask yourself whether the handlers of such money have ever heard of the story of Ananias and Sapphira. The two sold their own property and withheld some of the money, that is, they refused to give all of it to the church as per their original pledge. By so doing, they indirectly stole some of the money. And for that reason they were cursed and suffered death. People can say that was in the days of the old or primitive church. Even if it were, why should church authorities of the modern church swindle money they know has the potential of inflicting curses and death? It is because 79 The Bad Samaritan greed or self-interest propels them beyond the realm of fear. It makes them Lucifer incarnate and they challenge God by swindling the money given to Him in His presence and in His sanctuary. Can you imagine that?” “Beri, you surprise me. It seems as if you have pug-nosed in every field. Have you ever been a catechist?” “One need not be a catechist to know what is happening in the churches these days. Church authorities know the modern church is impotent. Everybody goes to church not for the soul but for the body. And since the body places self-interest first they break the ethics, the raison d’être of the church. When the ancient church asked its founder to teach them how to pray, He taught them to pray in the plural – Our father … give us our …forgive us our...as we...