It was around 8 p.m. when we noticed a thick cloud of smoke coming from the main road. Panicking, my mother left the pot she was cooking to go see what was happening. Dad, who was reading the newspaper, put it down on his chair before heading outside to see where the smoke was coming from too.
I stayed with my younger brothers and sisters. I told them to go to the living room. Then I locked them inside the house because the whole neighborhood was in a panic. From afar, I could see the fire about to spread to nearby houses and shops.
I was standing in front of our house when my friend Chika came to get me so we could go see what was causing the smoke.
“Where is this smoke coming from?” I asked as we ran.
“Someone said it’s coming from the main road. A shop is burning,” Chika said.
“Oh, a shop? Who’s the owner?” I asked as I picked up the pace.
“I don’t know.”
When we got to the scene we realised that it was Anesi’s shop that was burning. There was a crowd of people. The fire was getting brighter and brighter as the shop burned. Some people were even throwing stones to try to stop the fire before the firefighters arrived. People were saying different things about the fire. Some said it was witchcraft, others talked about an electrical short circuit.
We waited there, watching the fire. The firefighters only arrived around 9 p.m. They were able to bring the fire under control, but by then everything in the shop had burned down. The owner, Anesi, was so devastated that she fainted. She couldn’t believe her shop, the result of years of hard work and sacrifice, was just gone. She had started small, but with her skill for attracting customers in the area she had gained trust and grown her business. Whenever Mum needed to get something, she would send us to Anesi’s shop. We would only go to another shop if Anesi was out of what we needed.
Anesi woke up in a hospital bed without remembering what had happened. After she recovered, her husband explained the situation, which made her faint again. The police then arrived at the scene to investigate. The officers ordered us to leave and let them do their work. We all went back to our homes.
Back home, Mum, who had left the pot on the fire, found that all the food was burned, including the beef Dad had brought home from work. Dad was so angry because we were going to sleep with empty stomachs when we were supposed to have meat for dinner. Mom tried to clean the burnt pieces of meat, but everything had turned to charcoal, it was too late. That evening, I felt sick and exhausted. My stomach was asking for food.
“Why didn’t you take the pot off the fire?” Mom shouted at me, even though she had been the one in the kitchen.
“Because of you, everyone is going to go to bed on an empty stomach,” my father said as he headed to the bedroom. “Thank God the little ones are already asleep.”
I stayed in the living room with Mom for a few minutes before we went to bed. The night was so long. I couldn’t close my eyes. I just stared at the stars through my window. My stomach was really hurting. Around 1 a.m., I got up and went to the kitchen to check if there was anything to eat. I searched through the refrigerator for a long time before finding a small piece of kipolo in the sink where the dirty plates were stacked: a leftover piece of fufu from a previous meal. I took it and prepared a small plate of water mixed with salt. I ate it with relish. Then I went to bed.
In the morning, the police revealed that the person responsible for the fire had been identified thanks to public surveillance cameras. And the most shocking part was that it was the owner’s longtime friend Yanda. Anesi couldn’t believe the footage. She never imagined her best friend could do such a thing to her, given their long friendship.
The police looked for the person in question, and after two weeks of investigation, she was found at her cousin’s house in a neighboring district, where she had been hiding. They arrested Yanda and took her to the police station.
After several rounds of interrogation by the police, the accused finally confessed that it was indeed her who had caused the fire. Her goal was to make her friend poor, to wipe out all her assets, because in her eyes her friend was doing much better than her. Yanda had started her business at the same time as Anesi, but Anesi had quickly become more successful than her. As Yanda explained, she assumed that Anesi was practicing witchcraft to attract more customers, which led her to make such a bad decision. She confessed everything: it was jealousy that had pushed her to do all of this.
After appearing in court, Yanda was found guilty and jailed for three years. She had to pay a fine of 5,000,000 kwacha, which included compensation for the victim’s losses.
The news quickly spread everywhere: the story of two longtime friends, one of whom betrayed the other because of jealousy. Anesi decided to open another shop in a neighboring town to avoid such a scenario happening again. Everyone in our neighborhood was happy to see her resume her business, even if it wasn’t in our town. After Yanda served her sentence, she relocated to a distant town where no one knew about her past. The most important thing was that Anesi could start over.
