An Education

In the early fall of this year (I should probably say September since the idea of fall, or any of the other seasons for that matter, does not translate in Africa at all) I met a fellow on the dock who said that his name was Mark, that he was from Ghana and that he had come to Cotonou in order to work as a day volunteer with Mercy Ships. He arrived much later than February and there were no positions available by the time he arrived. He said that his friend who brought him here had assured him of being able to work with the ship and had stolen his money and headed to Nigeria. He claimed he had no place to live.

A couple of weeks later I bumped into him again as I was walking along the very polluted beach area not far from the dock. He said he had been sleeping in an abandoned building by the beach there and that he had no money, no job, and had been scraping by hoping to get enough money to replace his passport that had been stolen so he could return to his home in Ghana. I told him my name and left because the time had come for me to do laundry on the ship and I didn't want to lose my laundry slots.

Some days later Mark came to the ship and I got a call from the guard at the gangway that he was there looking for me. Well, his purpose was to ask if I would help him to pay the fee to get his passport replaced. He said that someone else from the ship had helped him with getting photos for the passport. It is normally better to say no and, if you really feel you want to help in a financial way, help only people that you have a real relationship with rather than give money to just anyone who asks. There are so very many of those kinds of requests where we live. Nonetheless, contrary to common wisdom, I believed this fellow and agreed to help him. I gave him some money for his passport, and on another occasion gave him some money for his return trip to Ghana and prayed with him. I expected not to see him again because I had helped him to get out of Cotonou and back home.

Well, that was not the case and he came back to the ship a week or so later claiming that he had returned to Ghana, had found out that his grandmother had died while he was in Benin and had left him an inheritance. He claimed that he had a valuable gold necklace and some property deeds that he wanted me to keep for him. He also claimed that his bag had been kept by the bus station until he paid the remainder of what he owed for his return ticket to Cotonou. At this point, I was certainly questioning the man's character and wondered if there was any truth to his story, although I really wanted to believe that he had been telling me the truth up til now. I did not agree to keep anything for him to his great disappointment. It was clear to me that that was not the thing to do, although I did give him the relatively small amount of money he asked for on the off chance that he was telling the truth.

Later that night my friend Olly spoke to me and said that he had seen me on the dock talking to "his friend, Mark". Olly wanted to know the story that Mark had told me. Olly is in charge of transportation and spends a lot of time on the dock dealing with the ship's vehicles. The story that Mark had told Olly about himself and his situation was very different from the story he had told me. It was very clear at that point that Mark, if that was even his name, was a spinner of tales. Olly and I had both compassionately given him money thinking that we were really helping him. Olly also told me other really interesting stories that he had heard in his interaction with shady characters on the dock over the years.

I confronted Mark the next time he came asking for me and told him that I did not believe his story and he did his best to spin his way out of that too including stories accusing others of diamond smuggling. I began to wonder why he would talk about smuggling and at the same time be so eager to get me to take and keep something for him on board the ship if he were not engaged in some kind of smuggling himself.

It became clear to me later that he most likely was trying to see how difficult it would be to get some cooperation from crew members in smuggling drugs or even people on board the ship while lying to get some money in the process. It was so educational for me to go through this that in the end, although it didn't feel at all good be lied to, I felt like it was worth the money I gave him to have the knowledge I gained on how to recognize criminals despite how silky their tongues. No great harm had been done and I feel much wiser for the experience.

John