One Way to solve an African problem

I have been reading “The Shadow of the Sun” by Ryszard Kapuscinski. Its about his life as the Africa correspondent for a Polish newspaper and is a collection of anecdotes of his life there.

In one episode, he was living in Lagos, Nigeria.  His apartment was in one of the less upmarket areas and consequently was regularly broken into. Putting secure locks on the doors would prove to be ineffective as it would merely attract more attention.

One day he met and got to know Suleiman, a man from northern Nigeria, who knew his landlord. He mentioned his problem to Suleiman and some time later Suleiman took him to a market that sold witch doctors medicines, talismans, etc. Suleiman told him to buy a certain bunch of expensive white rooster feathers. When they returned to his apartment, Suleiman arranged the feathers and tied them to the top of the doorframe.

He was never burgled again.

Now we all know the chicken feathers are unlikely to deter any potential thief.  How could that possibly work? To western eyes, it was no solution at at all, but the point is, it worked in the culture of Lagos.

Perhaps sometimes we should view the solutions to problems from different perspectives.