Indebtedness drowns dignity

from the faith and pierced themselves through mental pangs,” reads I Timothy 6:9-10.
True to the book, debts have ruined many people.
If you owe someone money, your rights are temporarily suspended until you pay up. You actually cede your rights to the creditor. It can be worse if the creditor is a loudmouth who seeks mileage through lending people petty sums and using that as way to win control over them.
“Were it not for my benevolence, he would have failed to bury his mother who passed on last week. I had to lend him cash for food, transport and even the coffin. God must just grant me more time on earth because my services are best for the poor,” you hear people bragging at bottle stores. There are times when one gets so immersed in debt that they fail to even “pay” attention.
Property has been removed from the houses of some debtors and sold as creditors battle to recover that which they are owed. Unlucky characters intending to flee to the UK have missed flights after being cornered at the airport or the popular Road Port in Harare where people buy tickets using both personal cash or borrowed funds.
As I commit pen to paper gentle reader, countless men have abandoned their wives in supermarket queues the moment a person they owe money walks in.
Some women have been deserted in bank queues the moment a creditor drifts into sight.
There are cases where husbands – even those sworn to jealous – have foresaken their wives in long-distance buses to hide from colleagues they took things away from and failed to pay back.
This could be the reason why restaurants now demand cash upfront because there are numerous characters who take to their heels the moment they see their safety zone being invaded.
But why borrow if you can’t pay back? Reasons for borrowing are many and varied. Some people borrow out of need, others because there is an opportunity, while numerable souls do so to please those around them and prove how well-known they are.
Office vendors who supply food items on credit play a part in their undoing by forcing people to borrow from them even when they have no capacity to repay.
Others lend you their chickens even when you are going on leave because all they want is having the chicken out of their bags. But wait until it’s time to repay and you will see an advanced version of hide-and-seek. During this time of the year when children are returning to school for the third term, people had to borrow from friends and relatives to pay fees and other school incidentals. Some companies offer their workers facilities to borrow through negotiations with banks and other funders.
Even those without schoolgoing children abuse the system and end up swimming in debt. Guys with new girlfriends, of course geared to portray themselves as “real men” go overdrive borrowing to spend a night with her in a hotel, buy her lunch and some niceties.
Women about to host a prayer meeting at their homes also fail to resist the urge to borrow.
They go to whoever has the financial muscle to borrow meat and other food items, ornaments for the house and expensive apparel to look good and organised on the big day. Even those on a date with a new lover go about borrowing new floral dresses, matching sandals and a handbag to look waal.
This writer is told of women who even go to the extend of borrowing a neighbour’s husband’s photos and a few unwashed clothes just to lie to the world that they have a soulmate when the opposite is true.
The danger, however, comes when someone who works with the said “husband” is part of the congregants being lied to. Almost everyone seems to be given to borrowing.
Schoolchildren are not to be left out. These borrow rulers, pens and covers from each other. The borrowings and lendings can even extend to uniforms, of course without the parents’ consent.
Problems and fist-fights in all these scenarios often erupt during pay back time. This is when the hunter becomes the hunted. Some people are naturally bad debtors or slow payers, laden with frailties that make it almost impossible for them to return that which they borrowed.
There are some characters who when you lend something to, know for real that it will never be returned or will be given back to you in an unsightly state.
“That guy is a real moron. He came asking for my car to attend a funeral and look at what he has done. I don’t think I made a good decision to lend him my car in the first place,” yours truly heard a certain bloke saying while pointing to a car whose fender was deformed like bread sunk teeth into by a hungry loafer.
Some women were heard firing barbs at each other and disclosing details of the numerous trips they made to n’angas together before things turned sour. When things go bad people often end up hating each other more than the love they shared.
This is when you see erstwhile friends reporting each other to the authorities, the police or even trading blows on the pavement. But this is at a great cost to their friendship. When things turn sour, information that was held in confidence is thrown to all and sundry.
Even in divorces cases, enstranged couples wash their dirty linnen in public. You will get earfuls of how the erstwhile husband siphoned fuel from his employers’ car, wetted the bed while drunk or smoked that weed called mbanje during the subsistence of the marriage. This is when it dawns on everyone that lies do the rounds while the truth is still putting on his shoes.
It will be a case of pulling the rag from under each other’s feet.
While the prevailing economic tide is such that one cannot make ends meet without borrowing, there is great need to exercise restraint.