Kanu lay motionless; all his energy had slipped away. He was in a daze and couldn’t even make out the other contents of the shady room. He attempted to open his mouth in effort to raise an alarm but the pain at the back of his neck was too intense that he could barely part his lips. Even though he was in so much agony, he still overheard the voices reflecting a steaming argument outside. Suddenly, he got an idea….
“Are you afraid?” Tom asked in a gentle courteous voice.
“No, of course not. Grandmother won’t mind when I tell her I was with you. I will run a bit late but she would never be mad at all,” Kanu’s face beamed with excitement as he poured out these words without pausing at all to catch his breath.
On his right, sat another boy from his school that he did not know. He later learned from the label on his uniform that he was called Magezi. The road was dusty and bumpy but that did not stop Kanu from catching almost an hour of sleep. Tom had lovingly placed his head on his lap. To show affection, he had patted the boy on his back till he fell asleep.
When Kanu finally awoke, he was all alone in the car. Tom seemed to be extremely infuriated considering the row he was having with an older repulsive fat man, several meters away from the car. He couldn’t make out the words clearly but he was able to hear him say, “I thought I could trust you. How wrong I was!”
Suddenly Kanu felt unsafe. Looking at the roughly built cabin in front of him, his heart paced faster. The neighborhood was grassland with scattered trees. There wasn’t a single house in his view; shrubs spread on either side of the old grass thatched hut. The poles by which the cabin was constructed looked feeble and didn’t reach the ground on one side. The space was covered with a tattered piece of cloth that was maroon in color.
He wondered where Magezi was; and the driver too.
Tom walked up to him, opened the door and asked him to come out. He wasn’t sure he could trust him anymore considering the way he raised his voice so harshly to the seemingly poor man but he knew better than attempting to reject. Timid as he was, he managed to mumble something.
“My grandmother must be looking for me now. It’s getting dark. You said you were taking me home,” his forced calm was becoming harder and harder to keep.
“Keep your mouth shut, kid!” he scolded. Gruesomely, he dragged him into the smelly shelter and pushed him to the ground settling on a thick smelly blood stained mat that was spread on top of dry grasses. Magezi’s body swam in a pool of blood in the right corner. He had several machete wounds at the back of his neck. His ears had been cut off. There were a bunch of other organs collected in a small heap but Kanu couldn’t figure out what they were. He nearly dropped dead at the sight of this. All of a sudden, he was hit by a heavy metal at the back of his head. Immediately blood oozed out of his nose. In a quest to see his attacker, he tried to turn around but he was hit even harder in the neck and he fell to the ground. His footsteps echoed in the empty room as he left.
Kanu lay motionless; all his energy had slipped away. He was in a daze and couldn’t even make out the other contents of the shady room. He attempted to open his mouth in effort to raise an alarm but the pain at the back of his neck was too intense that he could barely part his lips. Even though he was in so much agony, he still overheard the voices reflecting a steaming argument outside. Suddenly, he got an idea.
He crept towards the other end of the cabin where a notable amount of light was being let in through space. He drew the dirty cloth away; and paused a bit to be sure the argument was still going on. Despite the fact that his whole body ached, he steadily pushed it with all his might forcing a way through the rather small space. He retained some scratches but that was not a problem. He walked cautiously in direct line with the cabin till he reached a safe distance. Blood flew from his head, a little from the nose and scratched arms but he took no notice. He followed the footpath downward, for close to half an hour, he did not meet anyone. Dusk had fully set in and he couldn’t think of place to go. He sat under a big tree and cried profusely.
Many children in Kanu’s village were familiar with ‘Uncle’ Tom. He owned the shop where they bought take-to school food items and scholastics. It was right in the trading centre of the village, less than 20meters from the school.
On this dreadful day, Kanu was walking from school just like he did every other school day. At a junction in the centre, he had to part ways with his friends since there was a shorter path home. Just a few steps down the road, he saw Tom seated on a log looking at passers-by. ‘He signalled me to go to him. I was not scared because I knew him,’ Kanu recollects.
‘I will drive you home,’ he offered pointing at a car that was parked a few meters away. Kanu was very thrilled to sit in a car. He only did so once in a blue moon when he travelled with his grandmother to Kampala. He ran to the car whose back door was already open. Another man, who later turned out to be the driver stood leaning against it. He greeted him warmly and motioned him to take a seat. He drove in a different direction and explained that the road Kanu had taken wasn’t good for the car.
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