MAN IN THE HOOD: When your neighbour keeps borrowing your things

The award for the most irksome neighbour goes to those who just won’t stop borrowing your things. ILLUSTRATION | IGAH

What you need to know:

  • We all want neighbours who end up becoming close friends.
  • We long for neighbours whose children love us like we are part of their family.
  • However, in life, you rarely get what you wish for.
  • Most of the time, we get bad neighbours whose mission in life is to increase our chances of being diagnosed with clinical depression.
  • Do you have feedback on this article? Please email: [email protected]

In life, we all have a chaplet of desires. We long for principal things like good health, financial prosperity and infinite happiness.

We also wish to reside in good homes. And for a home to be truly classified as good, it has to be surrounded by decent neighbours. You might live in Runda or Beverly Hills, in a house with interior décor that rivals the Palace of Versailles, but if your neighbours are weirdos, you’ll still wake up every morning feeling frustrated.

We all want neighbours who end up becoming close friends. We want neighbours who will unhang our clothes when a storm is coming and we are not around. We desire the kind of neighbours that are always in a good mood, those that check on you to see how you are doing.

We long for neighbours whose children love us like we are part of their family. We want neighbours who invite us over for a plate of chicken when we are broke. (I know. I mention chicken a lot. This is the last time. I promise.) Chicken! Chicken! Chicken! Aaah. I just can’t stop.

NOT WHAT I WISHED FOR

However, in life, you rarely get what you wish for. Most of the time, we get bad neighbours whose mission in life is to increase our chances of being diagnosed with clinical depression. Neighbours that make you wish the landlord would kick them out the next day. Sadly, it never happens quickly enough.

I’ve had a couple of terrible neighbours, from a noisy deejay to a thief to a certain lady who used to preach to us by force. She had a voice as loud as a crusade speaker. We would wince like distressed puppies as she raged about the endless brimstones of the big, bad place called hell.

She told us that we were chronic sinners hence we needed to repent immediately – not tomorrow, not next month. She wanted you to do it right there and then. When she was kicked out for failure to pay rent, she said that an earthquake would pass through the plot soon and swallow us whole because we had refused to listen to her.

Nevertheless, she wasn’t the most irksome. That award goes to the borrower.

Generosity is a good thing but once in a while, we encounter neighbours who just won’t stop asking for your things instead of getting theirs. Today it’s “naomba nitumie pasi yako kidogo” and tomorrow it’s “nisaidie chumvi, yangu imeisha tu sahii.” They keep borrow too much that you fear they might even borrow your brain.

One day Collo from next door will come and tell you “unaeza nisaidia na brain yako kidogo? Dakika kumi tu alafu nakurudishia. Nimeshindwa kureason.

My current neighbours are all amazing people but a while back, I had a neighbour who would borrow literally everything. When he wanted to cook, he would ask for all the ingredients from cooking oil to unga. It almost felt like he was my child.

In the beginning, he had a strategy. He enjoyed using pity to trigger assistance. His praxis was well defined. He made sure to begin with lengthy stories before placing his request right at the end.

For example, when he wanted to borrow cooking gas, he made sure to start with a story on how he had been robbed somewhere in town so he had come back home without any money. He made sure to curse at how his gas had misbehaved at the worst time. You had to feel his pain and help him out.

After a while, he realised that I was quite generous, so he stopped borrowing and started demanding.

PUT HIM IN HIS PLACE

When borrowing, there has to be a question mark at the end, right? Can you lend me your iron laptop? That’s borrowing. Demanding, on the other hand, usually involves a statement or order – I need to use your laptop for a few hours.

That’s how my neighbour changed. He no longer made the effort to narrate long, boring stories about how he hadn’t been paid or how his bank app was acting up thus he couldn’t withdraw some money to buy unga. He just came and told me to give him something.

I eventually put him in his place one night when he knocked on my door at 2am, just when I was dreaming about Rihanna. How dare he interrupt my Riri dreams! As expected, he caught feelings and stopped talking to me. Thank God. That was just what I needed.

More good news followed as he moved out a short while later, since no other neighbour was willing to be as generous to him as I had been.

After my experience with him, I never borrow from the same person twice. I’ve been on the lender’s side and I know how frustrating it can be.

If you are this type of neighbour, it’s time for some self-reevaluation.  Learn to be self-dependent most of the time. Being self-dependent motivates you to push yourself harder and get things right instead of relying on others for a quick fix.

Borrowing is not bad so long as it is done in moderation. And even the most generous of people don’t like people borrowing things from them all the time.

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Do you have feedback on this article? Please email: [email protected]