MY PRISON STORY: Am Rebuked for Murdering ‘Children’ of Officer In Charge Murchison Bay
By Markson Omagor
(Writer)
The day next, we washed our uniforms that is ‘Radio’ and myself. That afternoon I busied myself cooking, an act I was doing for the first time since I entered M/BAY. It was posho and beans that I was cooking.
‘Radio’ picked our uniforms and sourced for an iron box for pressing the clothes. When I picked the clothes to wear the following day, I was genuinely surprised. While attending the labour parade, I noticed some unfamiliar weired movement just at the hems of my shorts. When I looked there in, there was a healthy louse which I quickly picked out and killed. A neighbor complained.
“Wewe, usiue watoto wa OC,” literally meaning that I shouldn’t be killing children of the OC. I grinned for him in place of a smile. I thought this shouldn’t have been! The clothes had just been pressed and there was no history of lice in abundance in ward C8. Instead of proceeding to the printing section for the day’s work, I branched to my ward to do more search. I entered the toilet from where I pulled off my pair of shorts and discovered the blackest louse I’ve ever seen.
I had at first thought it was a blanket tissue playing me games but when I pressed it between my thumb nails, the fellow exploded with a ‘tac’ sound. So it was, after all another louse. The shirt was equally not spared and so was the pant. I ploughed through all of them patiently and sent most of those good for nothing suckers to their creator. Convinced, I changed the pant, soaked the other and went for my day’s chores.
And then that evening as I was easing myself. I was open to an interesting view. In front of me were three Blocks. One laid on top of the other, each seemingly distinct from the other, lights teasingly emanating from the fluorescent tubes lighting each ward of each block rather independently.
Then something clicked in the sub-conscience. It was many years ago, in a very faraway place, 1985 to be exact and in Primary Seven. The place was Madera Boys Boarding Primary School. Then I recalled that chilly late evening. We had remained behind after 9.00pm being the candidate class for yet another hour of preps. We had walked back in silence after the Preps, we were about five in number, Joseph, Oluma some other two and myself. We then found the lower class pupils fast asleep though lights were on. Then a devilish idea struck. We found ground red pepper and peppered it into the nostrils of two Moslem Young boys of primary two.
Seconds had hardly ticked away than the first boy sprung up first with the back of his head, then the torso and finally the legs. Before we could absorb the magnitude of this reaction, the second boy did the same only more vigorously. We were scared to death! We stood paralyzed aware that the two were certainly on their way out of life. They did not, but the anguished cry that followed was too painful to witness; they cried for another hour or so, time lost meaning until one of us thought of water. The boys were literally bathed in water and then they cooled and we slept.
The first thing I remember doing the following day was to escape from school. I went to town and wandered doing nothing in particular until even eating pancakes bored me. I reached school at about 6.30pm only to find my colleagues undergoing a caning session that threatened me to the marrow. I regretted why I had run away, I thought to myself that my colleagues were coming to the end of their torture and mine was just to begin.
The Josephs had decided to sacrifice for me, despite all the canes, they did not report me as being one of them, I survived the canes and then onwards, I understood what friendship can really mean. Now years after, one of that circle was amongst the very first people to visit me in prison- Joseph Inangut. I made a promise to him, in absentia of course that home I must come, to him, my family and those who love and hate me in the same measure.
I retreated to a surprise treat. Two inmates were playing guitar and they played and sang so beautifully, so engrossed and so innocently. For some time I forgot about prison. When they stopped, the painful reality shot back, I quickly covered myself with a prison blanket and pretended to sleep. I do not remember when the pretense ceased but it must have been after a very long while.
Then two days after this memory, after lunch and the afternoon lock up a number of us were idly whiling away our time inside the ward. I was seated on my bed, as usual then there was a story teller. They were usually many that I learnt to disregard most of them. This story was being told in Luganda; the Luganda as poor as or probably poorer than mine. The narrator was a tall brown, mid forty, slim Mutoro.
(To be continued…)
