One Week

_{Photo by Pierre Herman}

When traveling from my school (which is located at the eastern part of the country) to my family house (which is all the way down at the west), we had at one point of our journey all come down from our vehicle just to walk across a military checkpoint before getting on the bus to continue our journey. I had no idea why we were asked to do that and seeing how no one complained about it or said a thing, I decided it was probably the norm around here so I just did what everyone did and continued our journey.

But I remember that as I walked past that military checkpoint, I had said to myself that one of the benefits of me going back home was that I would be taking a break from police harassment for a while and this was because the police always had this habit of coming to the hostel from time to time to harass students all in the name of "searching for internet fraudsters". Well, it turned out that I was wrong and even though I'm not the one facing the police harassment directly, this guy's just reminded that they are everywhere and can get into anywhere they want to.

Today has started like any other Sunday at home. I had woken up by 5:30am to prepare for church service and by the time it was 9am,I was already singing and dancing to the Lord. The service lasted longer than expected (as usual) but it finally came to an end and we all hurried home to eat breakfast (for some reason, Christian parents don't allow their kids eat breakfast before leaving for church on Sundays).

Anyways, we got home, everyone ate and they all decided they had to go continue their sleep (because we had woken up a bit more early than usual that morning). I on the other hand had decided to go watch TV in the living room. I was still looking for a good movie to see when I heard this bang on the gate downstairs. Now, experience has taught me that only two kind of people bang on the gate like that, it's either the police or thieves and I knew it was most likely going to be the police because it was broad daylight, but I still had to confirm, so I tiptoed to the balcony to peep and lo and behold, it was the police in the compound with guns.

Lord knows there was no way I was gong to open the gate, instead I rushed inside, closed the doors and windows and turned off the television. By the time I was done, our neighbors had gone to open the gate for them and it turned out the police had come for their son. I didn't come outside but I could overhear bits and bits of their conversation and from the little I could hear, I could tell the police had come to arrest their son for fraud.

I remained inside until I no longer was hearing any voices and that was when I slowly opened the door to look out. It turned out the police had arrested the guy and his family had gone with him to the station. What were the odds that just few days of coming here, the police would perform a mini raid in my home and arrest someone?

Anyways, they can keep on arresting people as long as the people they're arresting are really guilty of what they're being accused of, I honestly have no problem with that. All I want is to go a week without having the fear of being accused wrongly and arrested because that stuff happens every day.