A Long Night

I feel like a lot of people don't realize this, but living in a third-world country like mine, where the police rarely carry out any thorough investigation unless it involves a rich, famous, or important person, means you could literally end up in jail for something that could have ended a lot differently if you were living in a more developed country where things actually work.

Nigeria is a country famously known for its fraudsters, and although not all of us engage in fraud, it is a stigma that we all have to bear. But you see, it doesn't just end there, especially for this fraudster, because most of them have decided to take it a step further by performing certain diabolical rituals to ensure that whoever they try to scam does as they say.

Sadly, some of these rituals involve killing innocent people and using their body parts for it. And due to how rampant things like this are in the country, everyone is automatically a suspect. Actually, let me rephrase that: every young man out there is automatically a suspect.

You might be wondering why I'm saying all this; well, it's because there have been situations where a friend goes to visit another friend and decides to spend the night there but ends up passing away in their sleep, probably due to some medical issues, but due to the fact that it happened here, the other guy who's alive automatically gets tagged a ritualist, and if he's lucky, he gets to spend the rest of his life in prison, if not worse.

Thinking about things like this is actually scary, because if it was in a developed country, an autopsy would be carried out on the deceased body, which might then dismiss any thoughts of foul play and exonerate the friend. But things like that don't happen here, not because they can't provide or get the equipment necessary for these investigations, but because everyone in the country is so superstitious and believes so much in voodoo that their first and only thought becomes you being a ritualist.

It just goes to show you that unless you never allow people to come over to your home, or at least not sleep over, you might end up finding yourself in such a predicament.

_{photo by Caleb Kastein}

This is why I always wake up at intervals at night to check and make sure the other person is breathing properly whenever anyone comes to stay the night over at my place.