The Year Just Started and I'm Already Learning Important Lessons

You know how we never take some things serious until they happen to us or to someone close to us? Well there's a very popular saying, one that I'm sure we all know, it's the famous "show me your friend and I will tell you who you are".

In as much as I perfectly understand that quote, something played out early this morning that gave me a reality check and also reminded me of the quote.

My sleep this morning had been interrupted by the commotion happening downstairs, which was a surprise to me because it's been a while I heard anyone make that much noise, seeing how everyone were still at the different locations they went to spend their holidays, so I decided to come out and investigate and I was shocked when I saw a crowd downstairs.

For fear of not getting hurt, I decided to remain upstairs while monitoring everything that was happening. One look at the people in the crowd and I could tell these guys were not students, they were indigenes of the village where my school is located and a closer look at the crowd revealed two guys, their cloths torn to tatters and were both handcuffed together. And with the numerous kind of weapon people in the crowd held, I didn't need a soothsayer to tell me that these two guys have gotten the beating of a lifetime.

_{Photo by Grianghraf}

Seeing the handcuff was more than enough reason for me to remain upstairs because it meant that the police was amongst the crowd (even though I didn't see anyone in uniform), so I stayed up and listened to know what happened. It didn't take long though as one of the guys handcuffed was a famous criminal around here who had tried to rob my hostel twice, both of which failed and the reason why we didn't report him was because he too was an indigene of the village and the villagers here have a long history of letting criminals go whenever they find out that the person wronged was a student who wasn't from their village while the criminal was from their village.

Anyways, the reason for the commotion downstairs was because both of these guys had been caught trying to steal another indigene's generator and fan and other things and they were now being paraded around the street because the criminals had confessed that they were more than two people involved in the crime, a confession that we soon found out to be false.

The criminals had told the crowd that they weren't alone, so they had been asked to go point out who else had committed the crime with them, their accomplice. And the moment they did, that was when I knew that they were lying. The guy they had pointed out was someone who works as a barber and was trying to make an honest living. Unfortunately in situations like this, you get little to no chance to defend yourself as everyone is angry and looking for someone to pour all of that anger on, so even before the barber could defend himself, someone from behind had landed a heavy slap on him, one powerful enough to shut anyone up. That is one of the many disadvantages of jungle justice.

They ended up taking the three of them away and after about an hour, they had freed the barber guy, probably because they found out he was innocent and the main criminal (which was the indigene guy) was just trying to drag people down with him. After the barber was released, I found out that the other guy who had been arrested too could equally be innocent and had only just returned back from the holidays yesterday and the only reason why he too had been arrested was because the indigene guy had pointed at him and accused him of being an accomplice too.

The barber guy didn't waste much time with us though because he said that officers from the state CID had been involved in the issue and that they were coming to take both guys away and he didn't want a situation where they have a change of heart and come arrest him again. But just before the barber left, he had said something that refused to leave my head, he said that he was sure the thief had picked him out as an accomplice because they were friends and he would always play with the guy whenever he sees him on the street, that was probably why people believed the theif and didn't question him when he first pointed at the barber as an accomplice.

"Show me your friend...." you know the rest.