Vigilante justice. The stuff of comic books. A beacon of light to those who live in fear between the pages of books, and upon the silver screen. But there is a dark side. One that hides within the folds of reality where the streets are covered in dust, and the sun it seams to always shine.
I awoke from my nap to the sound of war cries. One loud one, and another more distant and far off. It sounded like kids playing the Ugandan equivalent of Cowboys and Indians. The school next door had today off for Martyrs day (the day when Ugandans remembered those early Ugandans who were killed for their love of Jesus) so it made sense. I drifted in and out of sleep for a bit then Agnes called Eliza and I to wake. Feeling fresh we prepared for the forty-five minuet walk to town to go to the tailors. We walked through the forest and greeted the other Sunday school teacher. She and her daughter washed their laundry in the sunny meadow at the end of the dirt path just off to the side of the road. The sun shone bright, and the day was hot enough for me to wear short sleeves and not fear the mosquitos.
When we arrived at the road a spattering of dried blood lay spattered down one lane. At first I thought it could have been motor oil, but when I saw the red spatters against the white lane lines I knew it was blood. It consisted of mainly spattered drips with larger pool like sections along the way like when someone walks with a can of paint that has a hole in the bottom. In my mind someone probably got in a boda or some other type of accident. No worries, that just sucks. I had only ever seen something like this once before. One day when I drove home from school I saw the outline of a line then pool of blood on the road. The police had attempted to disguise it with coke, but the outline stayed. The next day I learned the blood had belonged to a grade 12 boy at my school about to graduate (I was in grade 10). The image haunts me to this day. The blood today appeared ten fold and continued for 10s of meters down the road. I do not know though if anything will haunt me more than the image of the blood today.
I forgot that here they drive on the right side of the car left side of the road so it appeared that the blood moved away from the hospital and went up to Salama Shield. Eliza thought this meant it might have been a dead animal someone transported. As we walked, however, Agnes revealed the truth of the matter.
Eliza and I explained that we could not find a boda driver to drive us back from Courtney and Sandra’s place when we visited there earlier in the day. “Eh, it’s probably because they were helping. He is now in the morgue near there.” She pointed to the hospital. The direction the blood actually went in. Helping? Morgue? We asked. Earlier in the day a man had robed a shop that sold air-time (minuets for phones). He demanded the women put one million into his bag. When the man left the women cried for help (“Was that the war cry I heard earlier” Agnes said yes), and the boda drivers rushed to her side. Who said chivalry was dead? The villages Lyantonde are small, and the villages spread out. It did not take the boda drivers long to find the man, and stone him. They then took his body to the hospital to wait for his family to collect the body.
Because of the lack of sidewalks and the sporadic pattern of the blood we had to step on it as we walked. I had to step in a murdered mans blood to get to town. To walk on the leaking remnants of what hours before was a mans life. I am not sure if there any got onto my shoe. I have been too afraid to check.
Agnes needed to repeat the story Eliza and I could not seem to comprehend it. A man. Dead. Stoned for stealing money. The memory of a poster I saw yesterday at the district office flashed through my mind. The poster depicted a mob of cartoon men stoning another. The poster read something along the lines of, “Mob violence is a crime. Put an end to vigilante justice. Report all crimes to the police.” Some good that did. We asked if this happened often. Agnes told us it did not, but she seemed unfazed by the situation. That was life. It happens.
We sat in the dressmaker’s shop in disbelieve. When we walked back I walked on the slanted uneven paving on the side of the road to avoid the blood. In the trail we heard Jenna and Claire and Jimmy call to us. They started to cross to the side the blood spilt on, and I ran to tell them to avoid it. Life had left the man before his body drove down that road on a boda, but I couldn’t let Claire step on it. It still felt and will feel like I am stepping on his life. Stepping on an actual person.
We washed our hair at home. Eliza kept saying a man died, and I told her to ignore it. We couldn’t process it there in front of everyone. I felt ok. Just think of rainbows and puppies and it will be ok. Except it won’t. When we left later that night for a concert and got on a boda Eliza asked, “This didn’t have the body on it right?” I told her no. She then repeated, “this didn’t have the body, this didn’t have the body.”
I called my mom and broke down. Two streams of tears ran down my face. She reminded me not to judge. Maybe the man is better that he died quickly instead of having to live in jail. She asked are we any better leaving prisoners in solitary where they smear their blood and shit on the walls? I told her I didn’t know. She told when I blogged about this to honour that mans life. “You had an interaction with someone today,” she said. “Just not in a conventional way.” My father told me to wash my shoes with gloves on and make sure to not get HIV. His practicality, worry, and love were what I needed.
I didn’t know the man whom the boda drivers murdered. I don’t know who stoned him. I don’t know which boda they transported the body on. I do not know if that man deserved to die, or if the boda drivers overreacted. I don’t believe I am in the position to judge. I know thought that I walked on his blood, and that it was spilt without a just trial, and that justified or not he boda drivers murdered him. I saw the red of and walked on a murdered man’s blood. And that is an encounter I will never get over.
