The passage only makes sense if one recognizes that debtors were also, owing to their membership in the secret societies, collectors. The seizing of a child is a reference to the local practice of “panyarring,” current throughout West Africa, by which creditors despairing of repayment would simply sweep into the debtor’s community with a group of armed men and seize anything—people, goods, domestic animals—that could be easily carried off, then hold it hostage as security.
