A Close Call

One major problem the country faces is the use and abuse of drugs like marijuana and its kinds, especially in the university space. It has gotten so bad that it's almost like corruption at this point; cut down one head, and another will grow in its place.

_{photo by Wesley Gibbs}

It was a cool evening, and it was no longer news that some of my neighbors used a lot of these drugs, to the extent where they now get creative with it. Rather than just smoke it, some of them will put it in foods just like you would your vegetables, and they would eat it and get high. But on this fateful evening, one of the neighbors decided to get extra creative with it; he decided to boil it and then extract the water and make tea with it.

He was basically performing a chemical experiment with his body at this point.

When he began boiling it, he had come outside to sit with us while waiting patiently for his tea to be ready. As we all sat outside at the veranda of this two-story building, one of us saw a vehicle screech to a stop right in front of our building, and before we could all fathom what was going on, we saw a man dressed in black step out of the vehicle and into our hostel with so much speed that we didn't need anyone to tell us what was going on.

It was the police.

The guy who made this discovery also happened to be the same guy who was making tea with a substance that was illegal to have in the country. So he had quickly made the announcement that the police were around before quickly dashing into his room, the same room that was quickly turning into a crime scene with each second that went by.

Instinctively, another neighbor of ours had also followed him into the room, probably because the room was the closest, or his mind had just controlled him to follow the person right in front of him.

By the time the first officer got to where we all gather on the second floor, the place was empty. Everyone was hiding somewhere, anywhere. Then the worst happened: he began going door by door to knock.

Now if you have any experience with marijuana, you notice it has this very distinctive smell, one a police officer will most definitely be able to recognize, probably due to the fact that they too do smoke some of that zaza.

Well, as he went door by door, everyone held their breath as we all listened for his footsteps. We weren't only scared of the fact that two of our friends could be going to jail but also of the fact that these officers could mark our hostel as a place where marijuana is being used, and that could make them visit and perform illegal raids occasionally.

Anyway, just as he was two doors away from the chemist's door, someone decided to pay the ultimate price and opened their door to talk to the officer. After speaking to him for a while, we found out he hadn't come for an arrest but instead was there because another neighbor of ours had a case with them, and they needed to confirm his place of residence.

So the neighbor who decided to pay the ultimate price had to gone with the officer downstairs to identify the guy, and then they (the officers) left afterwards.