falling inside the black

So last week my workmate told me a story. He was involved in a small tiff once with a matatu. The mat hit him from the side, but the driver refused to accede, so they called the cops. They come and look at everything and talk to bystanders and clearly it becomes very evident - the events were open to interpretation, so justice was going to be doled out to the highest bidder. So they drag the mat and my friend back to the station. The mat driver calls his boss, his boss comes and pays off the cops, they let him go. So now it's just my friend and the cops. They tell him they're gonna have to charge him (obviously, coz the other "defendant" has just been declared innocent so by elimination...) Does he think he'll be able to chuck 4K to make all this go away. He's a good Christian, so he said no. Strike one. They take him to court. He doesn't have a lawyer, so someone over there tells him that to make things all go smoothly, he's gonna have to plead guilty, then he'll just be fined for reckless driving or whatever and everyone goes home happy. So he does that. The moment he said, he could tell he'd made a mistake. You know once you're guilty in the eyes of the law everything is now left up to their discretion. You basically no longer have rights. So this prosecutor now says that no, they don't have enough information to go on, they're gonna need to carry out further investigations. WTF!!! The guy pleaded guilty - what more do you need genius??? Anyways, the judge agrees (again, WTF!!!), and apparently also when you're guilty, bail is left up to the judge's discretion. So he denies - or it doesn't come up one way or another (remember my guy doesn't have a lawyer - he was advised it would detract from his image as cooperating with "the investigation" - term used very loosely). So now it's Friday he's going to go to jail till Monday. In remand, they make another offer, and now that he's actually IN jail the stakes are higher - is he gonna be able to get them 15K? 15K and they "lose" the file. He can walk away. He says no. Strike 2. At this point they're getting frustrated. He talks to them about a cash bail and they immediately seize on to this new-found opportunity: they can arrange for one for him, but he'll pay them 10K, then they'll give him a receipt for 5K. Implied in that transaction is, of course, a 5K bribe. He's like, guys, I'm already in jail. At what point are you gonna get it - I'm a believer. I do not bribe!! Strike 3. His wife gets there, gets him a lawyer finally, who tries to, from a friendly-face perspective, reintroduce the notion of the bribe to smooth things over, he tells that lawyer does he want to get paid or not, coz if he does, he won't bring up the bribes again. Strike 4. Lawyer  gets the message, finds another way to work with the system and gets my guy out, and then helps him out through the remaining court proceedings.

I gotta be honest here, that kind of (is staunchness a word?) is incomprehensible to me. This guy was willing to actually spend the whole weekend in jail just to stand up for a principle. He got all these opportunities even after having lost hope, and still said no. And what's more, his memories of the day aren't even bitter. He's looking at it from the perspective of the people he met there. "You know I even found some people who were arrested and no one in their families knew about it, I got a chance to witness to them, and when I got out I got to find their people and tell them." So maybe God did intend for him to end up in that cell that day. Damn! I think it's safe to say I've found a real life hero this week. I don't know how someone does that. With a lot of help from the Holy Spirit, I guess, but it must also take some courage. A LOT of courage. I got arrested once too when I was still in school,  and went hadi the cells. I didn't have to bribe anyone to get out. But I really think that had more to do with the fact that it didn't come up (a friend came and talked to the boss for me about us being only students and stuff, and lucky me I actually had my uni ID that day). If it had, I don't know what I'd have done, because believe me when I tell you, no one wants to be locked up in our Kenyan cells. 

I usually try and listen for that still small voice, and sometimes I hear it, but sometimes I can't tell the difference. You know, between what it's actually saying and what I think it should be saying. Especially in many of those, what you'd call, grey-area situations. Maybe I was supposed to hear that story. So I'd start asking myself these questions. If that incident had happened to me, and I'd been on the right to begin with, I think I would have found a way to rationalize my way out. I'd have told myself I shouldn't even be there, and isn't this one of those exceptional situations, like white lies? And I'd still have been wrong and I probably would have known it, but that wouldn't have stopped me. My church launched these things called real groups today. Basically home churches. I'm supposed to find one and join, and ostensibly they'll be able to help me work through some of these things. I hope that becomes clearer in my head with time. There's a song playing right now, by Hillsong, which I want to be my prayer: "...In my heart, in my soul/I give you control/Consume me from the inside out/Let justice and praise/Become my embrace/To love you from the inside out..."

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