Ola is this what you want to come out of me

As long as I live you won’t say anything.

Holding a Bible on the other hand whilst lifting the other we were made to swear in front of the court.

‘’I promise to tell the truth only ‘’ repeating this statement in turns. How hard it is to promise to tell the truth yet knowing that I am going to lie.

Yes we knew that we had made a mistake, only the truth was supposed to set us free but it was not the right time to do so since we knew that a 50+ years were ahead of us if we pleaded guilty. I regretted the day I had met my friend Ola although I was not sure whether he felt the same. He seemed to be at easy which made me think that it was not his first time to be involved in a situation like this. All the escape routes he knew and as for me I was only following orders, since I was not aware of any Court procedures.

My name is Fany, at the age of 19 I had committed a serious crime which was supposed to throw me in jail for the rest of my life. I had become friends with Ola for the past 5 years when he had moved into our neighbourhood with his parents. We had been good friends to the extent that we were now more than brothers. He could spent the weekend at our house. We had just finished our secondary education waiting for our results to decide whether we will proceed to college or we repeat. It was during that long holiday that we fall in the wrong direction. Since the daily route had become monotonous, waking up, eating and spent the rest of the day roaming around the city without even a cent in the pocket. Being in a position whereby you are not able to buy even a single 10c sweet can make you even hate anyone whom you see holding his or her groceries. This situation seems to be very small but when you are not careful you will end up in a situation like mine which can shutter all of my dreams in a minute.

It happened on the 5^th of December in 2019, when we were walking around in the ghetto, we decided to use a road that was near the dumping site going towards the Msis stadium. We wanted to see a match which was supposed to start at 3pm. As we were nearby that dumping site we saw a girl who was going the opposite side at it was like we were going to meet just in the middle of that site. We knew this girl from school, she was a junior and the other thing was just she had rejected my love proposal. We had a policy that no-one was supposed to refuse what I want since we were the smartest boys at the school. I had tried different moves but that girl was not moved by any of my moves. This means that he had created a grudge that needed revenge since I did not want to lose.  I didn’t want to revenge in a way of hurting her but Ola came up with another dimension which was interesting that time although it ended up in tears for both of us.

As boys we did not want to be labelled weak, so when Ola suggested that I should talk to her and if she resist we will beat her so that we will have revenged for what she would have done for us. This sounded interesting and we agreed to help each other in disciplining her for refusing my love proposal. When we approached her she refused even to greet us and we took advantage of the fact that no one was watching us and we started beating her. Little did we know that there is no secret place where you are alone? In everything you do there is someone who is seeing or a mark is left which can lead straight to you after you have escaped. What happened, happened and the girl falls down. We quickly ran back home and we cancelled all the plans we had. Whether the girl had fainted or she had died we never bothered since we thought no one had seen us.

We were surprised the following day when the police came to our house looking for us. I was so scared to the extent of releasing water everywhere. I wanted to tell the truth right away but the calmness that had Ola made me think otherwise. We were taken to remand and that is when I was totally silenced by Ola being given tips on what we are supposed to tell the judge or anyone when we are asked. All these lies plotted were to just deny that we haven’t met this girl. Due to Covid-19 the case was further postponed to January and it was during this period that I get to know the real Ola whom I had thought was a good friend all along. I realized that he had actually committed a lot of crimes and managed to escape, he said that his Uncle used juju so that he will not be caught and he said I should not worry we will not be caught guilty. Although all these proved to be going to be successful, knowing the truth that I actually did it haunted me day and night. In our African culture, if you kill someone the whole family will die if you do not compensate the life of that person you killed, so it was obvious that if we actually say we are not the ones who killed her, the bad omen will haunt the whole family until you bring the cattle and a girl to their family as compensation. I wanted to tell the truth but the fear of the Juju that I was told about by Ola and also the reaction from my parents if they actually know that I had committed murder scared me even more that I was left with even more confused.