Jun5 Written by:Kayle
6/5/2009 4:16 AM
Today, I went to the park with Calvin and some other moms with small kids. When I got back, Casper, the gardener, immediately approached me and told me in his broken English of how a man came to the gate saying the previous gardener sold him some bad oil. This man asked for my name and phone number, but Casper didn't give it to him as Casper thought this was a suspicious man coming to try to get information on us. Perhaps he was even the guy who tried to steal our tires. I asked Casper if he has seen this man around the neighborhood before. Casper said this man was a gardener in the area at 12 Percy Ave.
Then when I went inside to ask the maid and the painter about it, we realized that Casper was telling differing stories to me and to them. We pieced the real story together and realized that it was Casper who stole 5 liters of "oil" from us (which was really petrol we put in an old oil container) and sold it to a man. The man came back today upset because the oil screwed up his car and he wanted his money back from Casper. He also wanted my name and phone number to report what Casper had done.
The painter had just given me warning on Monday that I need to be watching Casper as there had been a few suspicious things about him that the painter was noticing. The painter also told me that the blue oil container, which was full, was in the garage on Friday but not there on Monday of this week. So when the painter and I asked Casper to show us where the blue oil container was, he couldn't find it, but could only find a few other empty blue ones. At this point, the painter and the maid began to lay into Casper and put pressure on him to tell the truth, even threatening to bring in the police. Finally Casper admitted what he did. I told him that this was a problem and that he was going to have to leave. Though he was sorrowful and didn't want to leave, I told him that this trust had been broken and I could no longer trust him. He turned in his keys and began to pack up his stuff while I called Mat to come home. Mat took him to his older brother's house (who probably gave him a good beating) and we are putting him on a bus this weekend to go back to his rural home where he came from.
Culturally, theft is only wrong if you get caught. If you don't get caught, it is often something to even be proud of. But when you get caught, it is culturally humiliating and shameful. Also, culturally, it is best to tell Casper's older brothers about what happened, especially the oldest brother, who is often times considered the patriarch of the family. Due to the shame that Casper has brought onto his family, I'm sure his oldest brother will give him a good scare (and hiding) for what he's done. Mat said that when he took Casper to his brother's house, he could tell his older brother was so disappointed in what Casper had done.
All in all, 5 liters of petrol is really not that big of a deal, but theft often starts small and gradually builds up. Of course after we fired Casper, we found out from the maid that Casper was sometimes using Mat's bike to go visit his brothers on the weekends or was using some of our property without asking us. The real problem is that he has lost our trust. Casper has the keys to all the garages and gates on the property. We could no longer trust him with our belongings. This is the second gardener in 9 months whom we've caught stealing from us. Will we ever find a good, honest and trustworthy gardener?
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