By FRANCIS ONTOMWA
Imagine watching a gang of four strong men attack your mother, who is a ‘Guardian Angel’ to you, leaving for death. Then the senseless team turns to your elder sister for similar treatment, as you watch. Would you utter a word when you very well know you are next in line?
This was the dilemma facing little angle Doreen Buluma, aged nine, when a murderous gang visited her family with terror in Teso.
However, the terrified and confused Class Three pupil at Papa Primary mustered rare courage to save the mother and sister when four men sought to execute the last step of their mission: killing the victims.
To her amazement, her soft unco-ordinated words, pleading with the criminals to spare the lives of the two, worked wonders. They ‘miraculously’ listened to her voice of desperation! “I was asleep when the gang broke into our house, but somehow, their movement awakened me. They went straight to my mother and hit her. They also flushed out my sister Marvin, 17, and placed her close to my mother. As if that wasn’t enough, they began to beat them mercilessly,” a suprisingly calm Doreen narrated to The Standard at their home yesterday.
“They laid my mother and sister side by side and then they all raised their machetes ready to kill them. With rare boldness, I asked them why they wanted to kill my only hope (mother) and they held back their pangas and, surprisingly, left.”
She says she did not believe they would listen to her because, at the same time, she feared she would also be pulled into the execution roll.
“I knew I was risking my life. I stood back, held my breathe and spoke my mind. I felt what they were doing was unfair. I hate those men,” she said, breaking into tears.
This was the kind of mental torture young Jonah Otolim underwent as he watched his father brutally murdered outside their living room. He describes the chilling experience as simply traumatising.
“I watched their every movement from a corner of the house where I hid. They were six. They pulled my father outside and one of them pulled an axe and laid it on dad, bringing him down. That was his end,” observed the 14-year-old Standard Eight pupil at Akubwait Primary with tears down his cheeks.
