by Aluta Nite
Male students were not innocent either, as some had affairs with older rich women - sugar mummies - who whisked them off-campus to enjoy good times in the city. They too showered the students with money, fancy clothes and other luxuries, and sometimes let them drive their posh cars.
It is interesting that that much could be learned both outside and inside college campus lecture halls about life and people.
Micro Finance
As economic progress was desired in various communities in the third world, there emerged welfare groups, lending ‘merry-go-rounds’ and the like. These were mostly women’s groups operating small businesses in order to empower men, women and their families achieve financial independence and thus propel their lives forward. Specifically, families were better able to feed, clothe and house themselves; educate their children; and fulfil other ambitions.
Some groups got involved in dairy cow-rearing projects whereby one person was given a pregnant heifer that later had a calf. If it was a female calf, she passed it on to another member of the group who would do the same later for another member. If it was male, the original recipient retained the calf. After giving out one female calf, all subsequent ones were retained by the original recipient to build his or her herd.
The cows were artificially inseminated during the peak of their fertility with the aim of calving every year. The milk produced could be used by the owner’s family and sold if in excess.
The heifers were all exotic and so were the seeds for insemination. Group members contributed money for the insemination vials and the purchase of liquid nitrogen for the seeds to be stored in designated locations.
A few members of the group were trained for a small fee to carry out the inseminations. Supporters from oversees provided some of the inseminators with donated motorbikes, to enable them to quickly reach group members with cows in heat, given the brief window of opportunity.
In some cases, the groups had exotic goats or chicken instead of, or in addition to cows. If they had goats, a group member was given two exotic ones, one male and a female. That member handed over to a new beneficiary the first kid born, whether it was male or female, and another member handed over to the same new beneficiary a kid whose gender, the new beneficiary had not received.
In other words, the new beneficiary received two kids, one male and one female, each from a different group member. All other kids born subsequently; were retained by the original recipients. If the group had chicken, a group member was given two exotic females in order to supply eggs for food and sale.
The first two female chicks hatched were handed over to another group member, while the rest remained with the original recipient. A few eggs were taken back as donations to the hatcheries that had resulted in chicks then hens obtained previously and that could in turn be given to members of new groups by the hatcheries. This was, therefore, a manifestation of the multiplier effect.
The handing over of calves, kids and chicks to new beneficiaries was done when the animals were strong enough to be on their own, which was about one month to three months after birth depending on the size of the animal or bird. The new beneficiaries would buy milk from other group members to feed their calves or kids until weaning. In time, most group members had both cattle and chicken.
Groups functioned quite well and the animals multiplied, increasing yields for milk, eggs and meat for food and sale. Children became healthier taking milk from cows and goats and eggs from chicken given natural feed.
There were also trained agricultural workers that helped group members, for a small fee, when the animals got sick. They also advised groups on how to do a variety of things, including constructing chicken coops or hay barns, and housing for zero-grazing cattle, where there was shortage of land.
In some groups, members met regularly to make cash contributions of stipulated amounts. The cash was given to a designated member who used the money to uplift her or his standard of living; for instance, starting a small business or simply saving the money. In other groups, the cash contribution was used to make a specific improvement in the life of a designated member, such as buying permanent fixtures for her or his house or replacing worn furniture.
In some cases, wealthy individuals helped set up village banks to loan money for the initiation of small businesses and the like. Good record-keeping helped propel this type of service to reach many more people.
In one case, an international body set aside funds that were used to start a women’s finance trust that lent money to women and men all over the country. What started small in the city; among a few women, developed into something with national influence aiding many communities far and near.
The latter two types of financial organizations could grow into large institutions quickly, if borrowers paid back their loans on time. Likewise, as borrowers paid back their debts, they could apply for new loans, begin new endeavours and reach new goals and consequently, progress in self-reliance.
Some people however, did not believe in any of the aforementioned financial projects. Therefore, before long, they found themselves left behind, as most of those that participated made substantial advances in their own and their children’s lives and futures.
Abuse in Public Transport
Sanda had a friend named Angie, who was sick in hospital. Angie’s father was also sick at home. One Saturday, Sanda woke up as early as she would on a workday. She did her cleaning and washing, as she normally would on Saturdays. She then prepared lunch, ate and decided to visit Angie’s father and later Angie.
She took public transportation and arrived at Aggie’s father’s house before three in the afternoon. There were many others visiting him as well. Sanda stayed until four o’clock then left for the hospital to see Angie. She reached the hospital at five o’clock, just as visiting time began.
She stayed with Angie in her ward for an hour, then left to go back home before visiting time was over. There were other visitors with Angie as well, who remained after Sanda left. Sanda made haste to reach home before it got dark.
She walked to the bus stop near the hospital to wait for her bus. While waiting, two rowdy young males came to the bus stop, looking like untamed dogs nosing around the women. One even attempted to talk to Sanda, but she never responded. They appeared to be intoxicated, but she did not know whether that was the case or not.
Other women at the bus stop were also uneasy about their behaviour. There were many other people at the bus stop, but all kept to aloof. Nobody tried to deter the young men from acting stupid.
The bus eventually came and many people, including the two hooligans and Sanda, entered, though it was already full. Nobody knew when the next bus would come, and night was beginning to fall. Sanda was now uncomfortable about being in the crowded bus with the two questionable characters.
She therefore moved slowly and with difficulty from the back entrance to the front of the bus, in order to be safe from them. Fellow passengers complained as she made her way, when they were stepped on, pushed or leaned on.
Moreover, the air inside the bus was hot, sweaty and rank with all sorts of unpleasant odors. The morning perfumes, aftershave lotions, deodorants, hair oils and sprays had over-lived their freshness and turned pungent in combination with bodily secretions.
Not long after Sanda reached the front of the bus, several women at the back of the bus began to protest loudly and scream, saying they were being groped, fondled and even urinated on, presumably by the two hooligans. They were taking advantage of the crowded bus to impose themselves on women. When challenged, they argued that the bus was full and that the women were being unreasonable.
Moreover, the ticket collector could not collect fares as expected, because there was no room to manoeuvre to and fro to reach new passengers. He therefore told the driver to close the back door so that nobody could get out through it.
He then st
ood at the front door collecting fares as passengers got off. New passengers were not allowed on as the bus was too full. Meanwhile nobody expressed concern regarding the plight of the women in the back of the bus.
The bus moved on in that state of contained chaos until Sanda reached her stop, where she finally breathed fresh air and a sigh of relief. The journey had been slow because the bus was too full, and the route uphill most of the way. She had escaped a dangerous situation at the bus stop and being in that bus. It was about seven in the evening and she rushed home.
On another day, Sanda was traveling in the morning on a public mini-bus, from the countryside to a town nearby and finally to the city. She reluctantly sat in the last of the four seats at the very back, because all other seats were full. Next to her on the right sat a young man. There were two other people at each window seat.
After a short while, she felt something pushing onto her from the right. She ignored it thinking the young man was moving in his seat, to get more comfortable and had inadvertently touched her.
How wrong she was. When she felt a push from the right side again, she did not brush it off in her mind. She looked over quickly to see what it was. The young man was putting his right hand into the right pocket of her skirt, with the apparent aim of reaching for her groin, if not picking her pocket in case there was money.
She asked him loudly, aghast with anger, “What are you doing?!”
He pretended not to have heard, removed his hand quickly and remained calm for some time. When the mini-bus accelerated and the road became bumpy, he started again.
This time she pushed his hand away and said, “Stop this abuse!”
He mumbled something and kept quiet. Nobody else said or did a thing to alleviate the situation. When the delinquent tried yet again to intrude on her, Sanda got up and continued the rest of the journey standing in the aisle. Still nobody responded to the situation. She reached her destination and left the mini-bus quickly.
While she was sitting down, her handbag was placed in such a way that there was no way by which the young man could reach it and that is why she concluded that his behaviour was abuse. Meanwhile in the process of standing, more passengers entered the mini bus and it got too full. At the time of alighting, someone pushed her and took her money from the side pocket of her handbag.
Everybody’s silence, especially the elderly in the aforementioned situations involving public transportation, gave the young men the courage to have their way. If one or more adults had raised their voices, the illicit behaviour likely would have been nipped in the bud. This is not to say that the offending parties had no personal responsibility regarding their own behaviour.
The elderly among us are usually afforded more respect and can therefore accomplish more by way of correcting the public misconduct of those younger than them. Others in authority such as bus drivers and ticket collectors also did nothing in the aforementioned situations, when they were in better positions to put an end to the lewd behaviour. Silence maybe golden in some instances, but at such critical moments, it often implies consent to offensive and even criminal behaviour.
Hate and Love Potions
The wooing of a girl can take dramatic turns, depending on what one believes or even where one comes from or resides.
Lucy was a high school girl in boarding school when she encountered the inconceivable. Her mother resided in a rural village in the countryside with her siblings, while her father worked in a far-off city.
During school vacations she visited her father in the city for a few days before proceeding to the village to be with the rest of her family. School closed early in the morning on the last day of term, so Lucy usually left early and reached her father’s residence by seven, just before he left for work.
On one occasion, however, public transportation from school was delayed, so she reached her father’s house at eight, after he had already left for work. Her father had left the house keys with a trusted next-door neighbour, a schoolteacher, who was already on vacation.
Lucy arrived knowing that her father had left, but there was nothing she could do. She decided to sit on the veranda and wait for him to return for lunch. She knew where he worked, but did not want to commute there with her heavy luggage.
As she appeared on the path heading to the house, her father’s neighbour saw her through the front window facing the path. The neighbour had been on the look-out for Lucy, and therefore rushed outside to call and welcome her inside her house, before conveying her father’s message.
Lucy was reluctant to go into the neighbour’s house, but since she had a message from her father, Lucy acquiesced. The neighbour probably noticed Lucy’s unwillingness, but cared more about the opportunity that had availed itself for her to carry out her ploy. She was elated.
Lucy had known for some time that the neighbour had a brother who was interested in her, though she despised him. He did not live with his sister, but came around often. The neighbour and her husband had tried to be especially cordial and close to Lucy, in order to facilitate a match with her brother, his in-law, but she was repulsed by the idea and by them.
So by the time, Lucy arrived, the neighbour had already made tea for breakfast. Her husband, a policeman, had left for work and their children had gone off to their last day at school before their vacation began. She was, therefore, alone, and the time was ripe to carry out her dirty deed.
Instead of giving Lucy her father’s message, she insisted on her staying for tea. The neighbour proceeded to the kitchen to serve them each a cup of tea, and Lucy inadvertently saw past the billowing curtain that covered the entrance to the kitchen.
The neighbour poured hot milky tea into a cup standing on a saucer and added two teaspoons of sugar. She was not finished though, because she took a brown paper bag off a shelf, un-wrapped it to reveal a white powder, took a pinch of the powder and added it to the tea in the cup.
She then murmured some words as she stirred the tea. Lucy watched in horror and disgust and was determined not to stay any longer or fall prey to her hostesses trap. Her scheme was to deliver a love potion to Lucy; that would cause her heart to incline towards the neighbour’s brother, so they could easily become a couple.
As she came back into the living room with the cup of tea, Lucy folded over as if suffering severe abdominal pain and in need of relieving herself. The neighbour had no choice, but to give Lucy the key so she could go to her father’s house and lie down. When her father came home for lunch, she reported everything. He had been unaware that his neighbours had such intentions towards his daughter. However, the act of slipping something into her tea was not a surprise to him.
Her father told her that he too stopped taking office tea in the mornings and afternoons. He did so because he had witnessed a male co-worker slip something into the teapot intended for their boss, who he wanted special favours from. Her father feared for his health, so although he was not the boss, he stopped taking office tea.
Theft at the Banks
Allen and Melanie found it fun living and working in the city for many years, but that was not their final goal in life. They wished to live closer to nature at some point in their lives. So, when the time was ripe, they moved to the backcountry where their roots were.
They, however, did not relinquish all their interests in the city and therefore went back every so often.
For instance, they retained their checking account in a bank in the city and their rental properties. In fact, rental income was auto-deposited in their checking account on a monthly basis. They were also able to access cash without going to the bank, using their debit cards at automated teller machines (ATMs), which were a new development in banking at the time.
Interestingly, a bank employee got wind of their move from the city and concluded that the distance between the backcountry and the city, would prevent Allen and Melanie from keeping
track of the goings-on in their account, until they received quarterly statements.
However, Allen and Melanie were very alert and detail-oriented people. Soon after generating a transaction, they calculated and knew what their financial position was. Therefore, between bank statements, they kept strict tabs on bank balances and reconciliations at all times.
Anyhow, six months after leaving the city, trouble started. Someone in the bank made two unauthorized withdrawals of $1,500.00 each on the same day. Allen and Melanie detected the anomalies and lodged a complaint on phone, then in a letter to the branch manager.
Because the entries were not reversed promptly, two months after they had occurred, the couple travelled to the city to see the branch manager and attend to other business. He apologized for the delay, which he attributed to investigations, reversed the entries in their presence and gave them their advice of credit.
However, after three months, an unauthorized entry of $3,000.00 was made. The couple had to lodge a complaint again. Because they were soon going to the city for other reasons, they decided to stop by the bank and report the error in person. Again, the correction was made as they waited.
They then asked the manager what had been going on given that they had experienced three anomalies within six months. He did not, however, give them a clear explanation of the internal matters brewing, as it would have discouraged them from maintaining an account at their bank. After that, the issue went away permanently, because perhaps the culprit was afraid of getting caught or losing their job, if they had not already lost it for being negligent or dishonest.
Meanwhile, customers were having it rough with the banking industry, because of a rush of robberies targeting people as soon as they exited their banks, after having cashed large checks.
The thieves even knew exactly how much their victims had withdrawn, leading people to deduce that the robberies were coordinated between bank employees, specifically cashiers, and the thugs waiting outside. Basically, as soon as customers who had made large withdrawals turned their backs and headed to the door, the conniving cashiers used cell phones to call their accomplices, in order to describe their intended victims and the amount of cash they were carrying.