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The impact of this proverb is lost in a world were cities don't need walls. In industrialized nations, we don't have marauders who live in the forest waiting to burn and pillage. We don't have lookouts on the walls searching the horizon for clouds of dust indicating men-at-arms. We don't have city gates and motes and draw bridges. But in the Middle Ages these things were not only effective, they were necessary. No direct attack on a walled city was ever successful where the people were willing to defend it. The wall not only protected the city, it was the foundation of its prosperity. The people had confidence to invest.
Throughout most of Africa, however, walls are more than necessary; they are of first importance. While in Chad in 2003, a young American missionary drove me and some friends around N'Djamena, the capitol city, visiting various missionaries working with TEAM. Every home had 10 foot walls with barbed wire atop, heavy wooden gates, and full time guards that opened them from the inside when we hit the horn. That is of course only after looking through the slit in the gate to make sure who we were.
I asked my driver, "Why do all the people here have walls around their houses and why do the westerners all have guards?" His simple reply was, "You haven't been in Africa very long, have you?"
One night while coming home from shooting video, we were putting some of the camera equipment in the bed of a truck because there wasn't enough room in the cab for people. Our driver told us anything put in the back of the truck will be stolen. I was astonished.
"Even at 30 miles an hour?" I blinked.
"Even at 50." He intoned.
Without a wall around the orphanage in Chad, not only is the safety of the children at risk, but the entire program is a risk. All the nice dormitories and all the equipment will be useless without a wall. That's right, useless. It isn't just that thieves will break in and steal something. Children themselves are valuable commodities. The sex slave trade in Africa is as big as cocaine in South America.
But there is something far worse that the occasional theft or child abduction. Any place in Africa that accumulates valuable items (as is the necessary case of an orphanage) in which no real security is maintained (that is walls, lights and guards) will attract scavengers from everywhere. It will be an invitation for criminals to set up shop near by and take until there is nothing left. It will be not unlike a wounded animal surrounded by hyenas. The entire work can be lost. The entire investment can be lost.
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