I was reminded of this story while writing the story of the skinny pig, because it got me to thinking of how death was perceved differently by different cultures. This too, is not a story for the squeamish, and I wonder if the facebook police will allow it to be posted. However, I always tell the truth, and that is what I am doing here.
I was catching the bus to Manzini, on my way back to my school in Swaziland, after a weekend of working on the Peace Corps Swaziland newsletter, The Incwadzi Yetfu. (it means “Your Newsletter”) I was sitting on the hill beside the Mbabane Bus Rank, and had about an hour and a half before my bus left. I was sitting in the hot shade of a small tree, grading woodworking test papers. Minding my own bidness.
I heard the voices of two fathers, which were quite loudly, arguing just below me about 20 feet, and it drew me out of my grading papers mode. The swazis are a very peaceful people. You almost never heard raised voices, and it was thought to be quite rude to shout or argue in public. It just wasn’t done.
I looked down, and there were two men, face to face about two feet apart, loudly disputing something. It was in siSwati, and I was not catching enough of it to understand what the fracas was about. But they were yelling so loudly, that when I looked around the bus rank from my lofty position, almost everyone was staring at the two fathers. Around the perimeter were blankets on the ground where women knelt, and sold such foodstuffs as the bus riders might wish to purchase. They were all on their feet, staring. And there were 20 or 30 people milling about between the buses, bus conductors, drivers, and passengers debarking. Every one froze, and was laser focused on the two men. Their voices escalated.
I looked at the men again. They looked like they had come from a high level meeting of some sort, maybe a government meeting. One was dressed in a suit coat and pants, and a red Loriekeet feather in his hair, indicating he was a member of the Royal Family, tho with only one feather, not that close to the King, and he carried a knobkerrie, which is a 18″ stick with a big knob on one end. It was part of the traditional formal dress, and men who dressed formally, carried either a knobkerrie, or a spear, or sometimes a flashlight or a kitchen knife. You just had to have something in your hands. The other man was dressed in the other type of formal dress, bead necklace, a cloth wrapped around his waist like a skirt, and an animal pelt worn in front at the waist, and he had a spear, that looked like a 5 foot length of half inch rebar, like they use in cement forms, with one end hammered flat and fashioned into a blade. These things were formal, maybe derived from weapons many years ago, but violence was rare in Swaziland, and they mostly were used as part of formal dress. I had never seen anybody fight or shout, or brandish weapons in the 2 years I had been here in the country.
By now, the men were really shouting and gesturing, so great was their dispute. All of a sudden, the man with the knobkerrie hauled off and smote the other man right on his head with his knobkerrie with great force, knocking him backwards into the dust. The whole bus rank, every single person including me, gasped. This was just never seen in public. Never. The man lay there bleeding from his head in the dust, and the knobkerrie man bent over and yelled at him some more. People were freaking out, looking at each other and the men. They didn’t know what to do. So, the smitten man pulled himself to his feet, using his spear, and standing there woozily, rared back and stabbed the knobkerrie man in the heart with his spear. And pulled it out again. The knobkerrie man fell back into the dust, and just like on TV, his blood fountained out of the stab wound with every beat of his heart, getting smaller each beat, until no more blood came out and he was dead.
The people were paralyzed. Not a person moved. It was completely quiet. I was stunned too. I had never seen a person get murdered before. The spear man, looked up, and looked around at all the people frozen and staring at him, and he took off running. One of the bus drivers shouted something, and instantly most of the people grabbed stones and sticks, and took off running after the spear man. They all ran across the road in a big mob, into the parking lot next to the Spar Market grocery, and caught up to the spear man, and knocked him down, and stoned him to death. In minutes, he was dead, half covered with stones the people had thrown at him. Then they came back to the bus rank, and it was business as usual. The women back to their blankets, and the bus people doing bus things. When the police arrived 10 minutes later, to see the two dead men, nobody knew what had happened. I watched from under the tree as person after person shook their head to the police’s questions.
It shook me up, and when my bus came a half hour later, I sat in the jump seat with my pack, and thought deep thoughts about the value of life.
Life matters 