Be Aware Of Whom You Are Dealing With part2

In the year 2000,an incident happened which opened my eyes to the fact that at times I trust too much ,too easily.

Be Aware Of Whom You Are Dealing With

Having  been living and working in Lesotho for two years , I had made friends among people I used to play Volleyball with.One of them Mandla(not his real name) approached me and told me he had a girlfriend who worked at this place where they assembled mobile phones .Two days later he came to me with an almost new mobile phone which he claimed he had got from his girlfriend ,he professed that he was having problems operating it ,I did the best I could to try and help him get a grip on the operations of the phone. Eventually he suggested that we exchange phones as the he insisted that the one I had was easy for him to operate. He then said for an extra 500 rand he would give the phone and he would have the one I had.

I gave Mandla my phone and a hundred rand note I have with the promise that I would give the remainder of the cash at the en d of the month .Somehow I insisted that we draw up a simple agreement to this effect. Two weeks after the exchange I got a call from a stranger who asked to meet with me ,when we did he turned out to be a police officer who informed me that the phone I was using had been stolen and the owner of the mobile phone was also there.I took out the phone and recounted how it came to be in my possession. They suggested that we go to the home of the guy I was talking about so that we could confirm my story.When we arrived and Mandla was confronted ,he readily confirmed my story ,the officer then suggested that we go to the police station so that we could give our statements ,I was surprised when we got there to be informed that I was an accused person in the case and I was then put in police cells over the weekend.What really made the matter painful for me was the fact that Mandla was set free as he claimed to be below eighteen years of age and the fact that his cousin was a police detective at the station.

I spent a harrowing two days and three nights in the police cells and was taken to face the magistrate at Maseru Magistrate Courts on the Monday,the prosecutor who was xenophobic and abusive once he heard that I was a foreigner ,took to me into the chambers of one magistrate who asked for my passport and a thousand rand bail, I was told to report to the main police station every last day of the month until my case was heard.The first time I went to report for my first remand ,after the prosecutor started running his mouth about the fact that we foreigners came to their country to impregnate their sisters and left them with babies which they had to raised on their own ,I let loose my frustration and berated him about the fact that he was not being objective and looking at the merits of the case. Subsequent to this ,whenever I would go for a new remand date ,he would disappear and later tell his colleague to inform me of the new date.After a year of these cat and mouth games ,I had tried on my own to go and see the magistrate in charge of my case,I ended up just abandoning the case and just stopped going to the court. I was however lucky in that Mandla’s aunt was able to return my mobile phone after I came back from court after the initial remand.

This one of the things that have turned me into the cynic I now am,It now takes me time to trust people.I am no longer the gullible person I was then.If something looks too good to be true,then its too good to be true.