In March, my husband and I were forced to leave our home and rented an apartment in a safer place. The small town, the nice people, immediately sank into our hearts. At first it was hard to get used to… everything around us seemed alien, but after a month we got used to it a little bit and slowly began to return to our normal life.
The apartment we rented was located on the fourth floor of a five-story building. The first person who decided to get to know us better was a seventy-year-old woman, our neighbor across the hall. She knocked on our door and brought some homemade food (eggs, milk, and cheese). She said that her daughter lives in the village, so she always brings her everything. She asked us where we came from and how long we were staying for.
We made her some tea. During the hour she stayed with us, we learned about every resident of the house. We even found out that a police officer lives above us and a general practitioner lives on the ground floor. We heard who could make noise and play music at midnight.
A week later, the same neighbor knocked on our door again. This time she asked us to change her five hundred hryvnias. She said she was going to the supermarket to buy bread, but didn’t want to take that kind of money with her.
I was on my way to work, so I quickly changed the money for the old lady and put her five hundred hryvnias in my wallet.
After work, I went to the store, bought some vegetables and butter, and gave her the money. Suddenly the cashier turned to me.
– “Madam, what are you giving me for money? It’s fake.
I felt very ashamed. I had no other money with me. All the customers looked at me sideways. I had never felt so awkward before. I felt like I was some kind of thief. A woman in line saw my appearance and seemed to realize that I was innocent, so she advised me to be careful. After all, there are a lot of scammers around. I left the food at the checkout, apologized and left.
In the evening, I told this story to my husband. We both agreed that my grandmother could not have done that. She probably didn’t even know that she had been given fake money.
But less than a week later, the neighbor came again. This time she asked me to change a thousand hryvnias for her.
– “You see, they gave me a pension in rough bills. How am I supposed to go to the store now?
I told her that I didn’t have that much money in the house. All my money is on the card. Apart from this neighbor, we never really talked to anyone else. Suddenly, one of the neighbors told us that this woman had already served a term for fraud. How can you trust people after that? We hadn’t even settled in yet, and we were already in trouble.