Borrowing in error: Please don’t try this in Kakira
Sometimes life can draw such a cruel sleight of the hand on you that you are left wondering if you had been abandoned in a meme studio. Yes, you can joke around many things but never try re-enacting Undertaker and John Cena scenes with money lenders.
While there is this fella who can afford to write-off a loan he enjoyed by simply wishing it away as one taken in error, in Kakira that can make you become manure for sugarcane plantation overnight. I speak from experience. A very bad one.
In February, life happened on the heel of January. Borrowing to forge ahead became inevitable. A visit to a guy everyone calls ‘America’ in Kakira followed. America is slang for “money lender” or what you guys in Kampala call loan shark.
The problem is that loans are like pregnancy – anyone with a womb (read collateral) can get one. But they are very difficult to deliver. If in doubt, just ask the man trending for borrowing in error.
Mr America lent me Shs500,000 at 20 percent. Things were so bad that I could have taken it at 50 percent or more. I just had to get the money that day. But I had other debts. And obligations. And each passing day made the repayment of Mr America’s loan more difficult.
Now, Mr America did not take any collateral. I gave him my ATM card but this is not a card for the bank that pays my salary. So the only way Mr America was ever going to cash out was if I deposited money on that account in the first place.
Then things just went south. A good kyeyo payment from Kigali arrived on my mobile only for the guys at MoKash to block. MoKash left an insult to the inflation battering my household.
I went on Twitter to try and engage the telecom guys to at least unblock my SIM card so I could withdraw the measly figure and feed my dog and that is when it happened. The phone just went into another mode. It took a while to realise that the MKopa guys had also struck.
Apparently, I had not cleared the monthly fee for taking a phone on credit. The Nokia thing just slapped a terrifying logo on the screen – it was more annoying than the site of a coffin maker sobbing at a funeral.
There was a rasp on the door. I answered. A man wearing a blue jacket shoved a water bill printout into my face and smiled in greeting. I walked back almost subconsciously and sat at my desk only for another rasp on the door to jolt me out of it.
Landlady. She wasn’t in a good mood at all. She reminded me that I had gone two straight months without paying and that she was not going to let me start on a third month of arrears.
After several pleas, she relented and gave me 14 days. As she left, I ran for the bathroom, away from the children, to weep. I had seen similar things in one too many movies. I turned on the shower and there was a gurgling sound as water sprayed just long enough to wet a piece of paper.
Back in the living room, I asked a kid to check with the neighbours if they had water. She returned with an answer soon after. There was water at her playmate Scovia’s home. I dived for the water bill and only then did I realise that the doodle-like stuff written in ink was actually a word: disconnected.
I took a boda to a friend in Kakira and explained my predicament. Moze knew a couple of America dealers. We got one who lent me enough to clear two-month rent arrears and get water reconnected.
As we left the Quick Cash office, two men yanked me like they had grabbed a man who had stolen a duck. There were two others holding huge batons. They beckoned at Moze to get lost.
With each step, I could see where they were dragging me. It wasn’t to my death in the sugarcane plantation but another death anyway.
The America leader from February was pleased with the job of his rudimentary bailiffs as they delivered me in one heap. He scowled and fumed about my phone being off, bank account never getting money… He wagged his fat finger in my face when I talked about MKopa and that was it, saying: “We don’t lend money in error here.”
They took everything away from me.
Disclaimer: This is a parody column
