Dear Diary, Ha! My Wahala with the police. Well, I was warned by several people that the police in this place will give you wahala if you fall into their net. So I had a plan, At least I thought I did, which was never to fall into that net. Hence I made it my eleventh commandment, not to break the law ever. Little did I know that although asem mpe onipa, meaning trouble does not find people, people go looking for trouble, in my case on my birthday, a day that was supposed to be special, asem came looking for me. I guess I can still call it special, because the word special can be defined several ways.
So on this “special” day, I went out to get my hair done, get my nails done etc. etc. etc. I was in the girlish mood. I was supposed to have lunch with mom and big sis, so after all the pampering, while driving to go buy lunch, I guess I unconsciously broke the law. Ha! Ok so here is what happen, and this is my side of the story. I saw a huge petrol tanker, smoking like no body’s business, so I figured it was broken. That happens here a lot, where cars just break in the middle of the road, and everyone just circumvents them.
So I did, and to my surprise, it was not broken, it was just smoking that bad, so here I was stuck by the side of this exit, trying to maneuver into the exit, the police looking and signaling me to park by the side, and omg, for that few seconds I saw myself handcuffed, sitting in a police jail somewhere, wahala, so to me, this is a do or die moment.
So here comes Mr. Officer in the supposed to be navy blue uniform that has seen some good days so I really am unable to tell you what color it is. He strolls over casually, and asks for my driver’s license, of which I confidently oblige. At this point he goes, I am going to arrest you. Hmmm, talk about customer service, and their favorite saying of “the police is your friend”. I tried to explain to him what happened but he will hear none of it. Next thing I hear was “just do something right here”. Okay, so I knew that was coming but did not think it will be his second sentence. Bribery is the norm, and for the police it has become business as usual. So “just do something” translates to give him money.
At that point I told him, then he should go ahead and do whatever he had to do. The other person in me came out, and I went off on this guy. OMG! He did not see it coming. During my ranting process with him, me saying things like they (the police) using their uniform to intimidate people and take money, and letting the reckless drivers like the taxis and the trotros get away and their reputation being so bad, dude did not see it coming, and I was so scared but at this point, the damage was already done and I was definitely going to jail. I had opened Pandora’s Box, and there was no shutting it.
Ha! Who will I call, I started to think, and they do give you a first call don’t they? I hope they do because if not, then I am soooo screwed. To my amazement, dude starts to calm me down and ask that I not get so angry, the police is your friend he says again, well I don’t think so I answered. After he calms me down, gives me my license and asks to be my friend. Haha! At this point I don’t know if this was a miracle or I just gave him a shock. But whatever it was that happened, another police walks by to find out what was happening, and I ended up with two police friends by the end of it all.
My new police friend called the next day to find out, how I was doing. TIA!
ADEL DIARIES 