Joke, 23
Real names are withheld for the purpose of privacy
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Civil debt! They said the crime I had committed was civil debt. That I had stolen some money and it needed to be paid. They came to my home, a place I had called sacred, a place my children knew as sanctuary, a place I fed travelling family members passing by the neighbourhood who had now come to know it as sanctuary also. They came and dragged me away, pulling my arms away from my daughters who were as confused as I was. I still can’t shake the look on my son’s face, seeing his mother carried and stuffed into the back seat of a beaten down police pick-up truck. It seemed like disbelief and a truckload of disappointment. I would be disappointed in myself too.
It all started with Mariam. Mariam and her husband moved to the house beside mine. Their family seemed to make a bit more money than most of us on the street and I honestly think that was the reason many people on our street didn’t like them. I genuinely just thought it would be nice to have someone like her in my corner and I made friends with her. My husband quickly became friends with her. We weren’t exactly close but we were friendly.
A few months after Mariam and her husband came into our lives, my husband lost his Job – this is not to say in any way that their moving in caused my husband to lose his job. The company my husband worked for had some major setbacks in the previous financial year and they turned towards laying off employees. This singular occurrence caused a lot of tension in our home and put a toll on our marriage. We would argue about the most mundane things. It became apparent to us that the fights were getting out of hand when my daughter’s class teacher called me to tell me that my daughter who is normally a sweetheart had insulted someone in her class. She used the exact words I used on her dad a few days prior.
I went to Mariam’s house one day, just as a routine visit. While we were talking – I don’t even remember what we were talking about – I broke down, crying. “Ahn ahn, why are you crying, dear?” Mariam said with a look of concern on her face. In that moment of vulnerability, without considering the extent to which I knew this woman, I told her everything. She got up, walked to the drawer at the left corner of the room and pulled out her check-book from the bag on the drawer. “Take this,” she said. With tears in my eyes, I took the check and looked at her with an expression that she could have only read to mean “are you serious?” she nodded and asked “when would you be able to pay back?” I told her I would try to pay back in about four months. We spoke for a while, she gave me some words of wisdom, We shared a hug, and I went home.
Things were going great now that I had received a loan from Mariam. We paid what was left of our children’s school fees and paid all our bills. I used what was left of the money to set up a small shop in front of our house. My husband eventually got another job but it was not as well paying as his previous job. We were saving up money to pay Miriam back.
One morning, I heard a knock on my door – it was Mariam together with a policeman. She came to ask for her money. The policeman was not armed, but I could tell he was there as some form of show of force – a threat. “I need my money back,” she said.
“Mariam, is this really necessary?”
“it’s necessary o”
She told me that I had two weeks to pay her back every penny, just two weeks or else she would have me arrested. She said that she had friends who had connections with the police and she wasn’t afraid to use it. My husband and I went into panic mode and scraped the bottom of our bank accounts, but it didn’t even cover half of the money we owed.
One Monday morning, at the end of the two week ultimatum she had given us, my husband had gone to work. My kids were eating breakfast when she came banging at my door with about three police officers. They dragged me along the street, the gaze of everyone who I had shared a smile with, who I had bought from, who I had sold to. I was charged and my trial is currently still ongoing. I haven’t been convicted yet but I have come to know this prison as home now.
