I had gone pony-trekking with some friends (because that’s what you do in Lesotho) and we were on our way back to South Africa. Right before the border, we stopped at a gas station. While I was filling up the car, my friends went to the bathroom and came back with a story about how a store employee had purposefully locked one of them in the bathroom. Puzzled, I headed into the Shell Restaurant. (Side note: do gas station restaurants exist anywhere else?)

There was no one at the counter, so I poked around and found the restrooms. About ten seconds after I’d closed the stall door, I heard someone come into the bathroom and lock a door. My door. I was too baffled to protest. I mean, this had happened to my friend just minutes before. It was clear that I was in the stall, and even clearer that whoever had control of the keys meant to put me in time-out. When I finally did regain my senses, I started banging on the door and wondering how to hoist myself through the bathroom window. Finally, a large lady waddled into the bathroom and unlocked the door. There was no apology, no acknowledgement that she’d locked a stranger in the bathroom. All the woman said was, “Next time you must ask permission first.”

So it was a power trip. I had trespassed and she had shown me what was what (thought it didn’t strike me as particularly cost-effective to take the time and energy to tell a tourist what to do “next time”). Maybe this is what happens when you don’t have control of your borders—everyone goes a little crazy and gets a rush from locking other people in small spaces.

A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I drove to a Congolese restaurant in a neighborhood that’s a little dodgier than the ones we usually frequent. After dinner, we came back to see that one of the car’s back windows had been smashed and the backseat had been pried apart from the body of the car. The car wouldn’t start, and we assumed that whoever broke into the car had tried to dismantle the alarm system. So we called Rent-A-Wreck, they assured us that a new wreck was on the way and we went to wait at the Nando’s fast-food restaurant across the street.

While waiting, we debated whether or not to file a police report. It turned out that there was a policeman in line at the Nando’s, so one of my friends went over to talk to him. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: Our car was broken into across the street. Can you help?

Policeman: No. I’m on my way to an urgent call.

Friend: You’re ordering fried chicken at Nando’s.

Policeman: Yes. I’m very busy right now.

Needless to say, we did not file a police report. We did, however, receive service from a very nice Rent-A-Wreck employee who brought us a bright red car in exchange for our old white one. He also discovered that the car wouldn’t start because the battery had been stolen. Along with the spare tire. I didn’t even know we had a spare tire to steal.

At any rate, this incident suggests that there is a direct correlation between amount of chicken and amount of police service. The more fried chicken available, the less police available to do things like stop crime. Thus, I would like to make the following recommendation to the South African Police Service: rid the country of fried chicken. A decrease in the amount of chicken would lead to an increase in the amount of police service, which would lead to less crime overall and burnish the rocky path to the 2010 World Cup. Brilliant.