Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Cost of love
THE COST OF LOVE
By
Patrick Achitabwino
The moment the steel gate banged behind my back I knew it was goodbye to the outside world. A sea of eyes congested in an overcrowded cell was tearing me apart. A pungent smell of urine in conspiracy with shit fleeing from the overflooded leadless pot dumped at a corner gave my nostrils the greeting of the cell.
For five years, five solid years, I have to live in this overcrowded cell, see death face to face, struggle with scabies and live on a weeviled-beans meal a day. But why only five years? I am shaking my hornless head. Why was the magistrate so unfair with me so as not to sentence me to life imprisonment? After all, I have nothing to lose; I have had enough of the sorrows of the outside world.
The image of Suzika still lurks at the back of my mind. She had the eyes that defied darkness, sparkling at night. Her round taxina-bottom swayed backwards many a necks of men along the streets. I recall with laughter one day along the streets when vendors nearly provoked her anger. As she was passing by they sung …mainjekishoni akulera…dibwiriyo, dibwiriyo…
We had been married for a year and she had not been blessed to visit the maternity ward any day sooner. What started as a mere stomachache one evening proved fatal and costly to our affair. Doctors diagnosed her with cancer of the womb. She had to be operated, they insisted.
The moment the prosecutor asked me to confess guilty or not guilty, the Chief Executive of Mayoka Town Assembly was astonished to see me pleading not guilty. I was not guilty, I could not be guilty and I will live never to acknowledge that I was guilty.
As I was standing in the dock, face to face with him as a principal witness of the state I drew him back to the morning I banged into his office, sweat dripping on my forehead. I asked him if I had not told him that my wife was wrestling with death at Mangani Private Clinic? That she would not survive if I would not get money to pay for her operation?
The Chief Executive, Che Jalasi as we all used to call him at the office, told the court that the conditions of service of the assembly do not provide for loans in excess of the K100 000 I had requested to people of my grade.
I reminded him that this was a case of life and death. I told him that conditions of service are mere words written by people. I had even challenged him in front of his desk at the assembly, my fist banging the desk, that by public demand a constitution gets amended then how special was a mere conditions of service.
The magistrate, grey haired with his eyes curtained by sunglasses lifted the gravel and hit his table several times to control my temper. They were accusing me of stealing K100 000 from my office. I did not steal, I insisted, on humanitarian grounds I took the money to save the life of my wife.
Infact the day Che Jalasi denied me a loan I rushed to the hospital only to find my wife on a life-supporting machine. She gazed at me once as if saying “why my darling, why not saving my life?”
I recalled that it was the month end and that people had paid rentals to the assembly and to make matters far much better I was the controller of the coffers of the assembly. Early morning I rushed to the office, opened the safe and took K100 000 then rush to the hospital.
“You will have an operation,” I assured my wife. I saw Suzika smiling as nurses were driving her on a stretcher to the theatre.
I kept waiting outside the theatre, fingering my rosary for divine intervention. I could visualize the medical personnel scissoring the belly of my wife, removing the cancerous part, suturing the wounds and driving her out to me. But all that was mere thinking.
A stampede of armed police personnel drove me out of the long train of thoughts. I was under arrest, they told me. I told them the arrest had to wait, the life of my wife was more valuable than the might of the handcuffs. They could not reason. They had much power in their long guns.
“Bayisoni Mayikolo, you will be charged for stealing public money,” a tall CID officer told me at the police station.
“Correction,” I told him. “You will charge me for saving the life of my wife. The only crime I have committed is to come to the rescue of my dying wife”
A band of police officers were astonished, I could read that on their faces. They ushered me into the remand cell that smelt blood. One of the remandees was shot in the leg in a shoot out with the police. He was an armed robber.
A bomb caught me while I was in that cell. A policewoman unbolted the steel gate and took me into another office. God forbid, filled with sympathy she let the cut out of the bag, Suzika was no more.
“Amen..amen…” I had nothing more to say.
In the courtroom the double-edged sword of justice, if indeed it is just, was at the blink of chopping my head.
“Before I pass judgement do you have anything to say?” the magistrate asked me.
I nodded my head and said no.
“You are therefore convicted of theft by public servant…”
I cut the magistrate short. “Objection my lord, convicted of theft by love servant…”
The magistrate hammered the gravel on his table. “Theft by public servant, and I am therefore sentencing you to…”
I could not hear the judgement as I was arguing with him that it was theft by love servant. Finally prison warders led me to this prison. I have no regrets. Suzika is dead and let me pay the cost of loving her dearly. ENDS
By
Patrick Achitabwino
The moment the steel gate banged behind my back I knew it was goodbye to the outside world. A sea of eyes congested in an overcrowded cell was tearing me apart. A pungent smell of urine in conspiracy with shit fleeing from the overflooded leadless pot dumped at a corner gave my nostrils the greeting of the cell.
For five years, five solid years, I have to live in this overcrowded cell, see death face to face, struggle with scabies and live on a weeviled-beans meal a day. But why only five years? I am shaking my hornless head. Why was the magistrate so unfair with me so as not to sentence me to life imprisonment? After all, I have nothing to lose; I have had enough of the sorrows of the outside world.
The image of Suzika still lurks at the back of my mind. She had the eyes that defied darkness, sparkling at night. Her round taxina-bottom swayed backwards many a necks of men along the streets. I recall with laughter one day along the streets when vendors nearly provoked her anger. As she was passing by they sung …mainjekishoni akulera…dibwiriyo, dibwiriyo…
We had been married for a year and she had not been blessed to visit the maternity ward any day sooner. What started as a mere stomachache one evening proved fatal and costly to our affair. Doctors diagnosed her with cancer of the womb. She had to be operated, they insisted.
The moment the prosecutor asked me to confess guilty or not guilty, the Chief Executive of Mayoka Town Assembly was astonished to see me pleading not guilty. I was not guilty, I could not be guilty and I will live never to acknowledge that I was guilty.
As I was standing in the dock, face to face with him as a principal witness of the state I drew him back to the morning I banged into his office, sweat dripping on my forehead. I asked him if I had not told him that my wife was wrestling with death at Mangani Private Clinic? That she would not survive if I would not get money to pay for her operation?
The Chief Executive, Che Jalasi as we all used to call him at the office, told the court that the conditions of service of the assembly do not provide for loans in excess of the K100 000 I had requested to people of my grade.
I reminded him that this was a case of life and death. I told him that conditions of service are mere words written by people. I had even challenged him in front of his desk at the assembly, my fist banging the desk, that by public demand a constitution gets amended then how special was a mere conditions of service.
The magistrate, grey haired with his eyes curtained by sunglasses lifted the gravel and hit his table several times to control my temper. They were accusing me of stealing K100 000 from my office. I did not steal, I insisted, on humanitarian grounds I took the money to save the life of my wife.
Infact the day Che Jalasi denied me a loan I rushed to the hospital only to find my wife on a life-supporting machine. She gazed at me once as if saying “why my darling, why not saving my life?”
I recalled that it was the month end and that people had paid rentals to the assembly and to make matters far much better I was the controller of the coffers of the assembly. Early morning I rushed to the office, opened the safe and took K100 000 then rush to the hospital.
“You will have an operation,” I assured my wife. I saw Suzika smiling as nurses were driving her on a stretcher to the theatre.
I kept waiting outside the theatre, fingering my rosary for divine intervention. I could visualize the medical personnel scissoring the belly of my wife, removing the cancerous part, suturing the wounds and driving her out to me. But all that was mere thinking.
A stampede of armed police personnel drove me out of the long train of thoughts. I was under arrest, they told me. I told them the arrest had to wait, the life of my wife was more valuable than the might of the handcuffs. They could not reason. They had much power in their long guns.
“Bayisoni Mayikolo, you will be charged for stealing public money,” a tall CID officer told me at the police station.
“Correction,” I told him. “You will charge me for saving the life of my wife. The only crime I have committed is to come to the rescue of my dying wife”
A band of police officers were astonished, I could read that on their faces. They ushered me into the remand cell that smelt blood. One of the remandees was shot in the leg in a shoot out with the police. He was an armed robber.
A bomb caught me while I was in that cell. A policewoman unbolted the steel gate and took me into another office. God forbid, filled with sympathy she let the cut out of the bag, Suzika was no more.
“Amen..amen…” I had nothing more to say.
In the courtroom the double-edged sword of justice, if indeed it is just, was at the blink of chopping my head.
“Before I pass judgement do you have anything to say?” the magistrate asked me.
I nodded my head and said no.
“You are therefore convicted of theft by public servant…”
I cut the magistrate short. “Objection my lord, convicted of theft by love servant…”
The magistrate hammered the gravel on his table. “Theft by public servant, and I am therefore sentencing you to…”
I could not hear the judgement as I was arguing with him that it was theft by love servant. Finally prison warders led me to this prison. I have no regrets. Suzika is dead and let me pay the cost of loving her dearly. ENDS
