The sanctions available to traders when dealing with defaulters were weak. One woman was reduced to entering a client's room at 4 a.m. to steal his only pair of trousers, which she then waved triumphantly in the courtyard while shouting out his crimes: 'You think Alhassan is a big man because he walks around in trousers and white shirt, but he won't pay a poor woman for the bread and cola he eats!' Public humiliation of this sort is a poor substitute for legal sanctions.

QUESTION: What alternative enforcement mechanisms existed in this trading community beyond humiliation?

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 2334