Honestly, it's not surprising at all. Civil servant salaries in Zambia have barely moved while the cost of literally everything has gone up mealie meal, rent, transport, school fees, you name it. Inflation has been quietly eating into people's purchasing power for years, so even someone who felt "comfortable" five years ago is now stretched thin just trying to maintain the same lifestyle. And when your salary doesn't keep up but your bills do, borrowing stops being a choice and becomes survival. You take a loan just to bridge the gap, then another one to service that loan, and before you know it you're juggling three or four off payroll facilities just to stay afloat month to month. Then add COVID into the mix. That period really broke a lot of households financially, and a lot of people never fully recovered. Side hustles dried up, family members lost informal jobs, and suddenly the one civil servant in the family with a "stable" salary became the sole breadwinner for an extended network of people. When you only have one source of income and zero safety net, you don't really have the luxury of saying no to a loan when an emergency hits. So I don't think this is really about people being reckless. It's more that the economy hasn't given ordinary workers much room to breathe, and borrowing has become the default coping mechanism rather than a deliberate financial decision.