By Kilasa Mtambalike

I once travelled to Sumbawanga in Rukwa region and it took two days and a sore back to get there. My initial impression of the place was that it would be like a huge medieval village of mud huts without any modern facilities.
My imagination proved to be wrong but you can’t really blame me, what with all the tall tales about Sumbawanga. As a matter of fact, I was compelled to go and pray when I came back with all my essential parts, especially the private region, intact.
Sumbawanga, or rather people who hail from there, have carved a reputation for itself as the epitome of all matters voodoo. Stories, true or not, coming from the region can make the most fearless individual shudder.
It is commonplace to assume that places where witchcraft is rampant are backwards. And there is always a common trait about all witchdoctors; with all their magical powers they can never use them to make themselves rich and I can’t help but wonder why.
In many ways one is easily made to believe then that witchcraft and development are not compatible, in fact, they are a unique opposite in a way that they could never even attract one another, unlike other opposites. Witchcraft and development are simply worlds apart.
And that is why, besides being scared out of my wits, I had a very pitiable impression of the place before going there only to find out that they even sold canned malt liquor! Once there, like an embarrassed little lad, I made my peace by quietly apologizing to no one in particular and settled to the business that I was sent for.
Of late, however, I came to note that some of the most odd, weird and bizarre stories that I read in the papers come from Rukwa region. It is either this paper’s correspondent in the region has a nasty way of stumbling across bizarre incidents now and then or they just happen too often and are so rampant to miss.
Stories from the region are not only bizarre but also saddening. It only goes to show level of people’s take on things. That a man would kill his wife by hitting her repeatedly with a club after a fight over 3,000/- isn’t just a laughing matter, it is saddening.
And then these two travelling gentlemen did the weirdest of deeds. They were in another village and were given board by a person who regarded them as his best friends. Even the host’s neighbors took a liking for the gusts and believed they were the host’s relations. But that didn’t last long.
In a bizarre twist of events, the gusts, senior citizens at that, hacked their host to death, chopped him into pieces and, it gets gruesome, buried him in his own bedroom. But for what, no one knows yet because the visitors took to their heels after the fact.
And while all that was happening, the deceased’s 10 year-old son was present and watching. The little boy was the one who led people to the room where his father was buried after he was killed. Considering the remoteness of the place where the incident occurred, details remain sketchy.
But one fact of life is that for the same reason of remoteness of the place, the little lad will probably never get psychiatric help and will be forced to live the rest of his life traumatized and only God knows what would become of him.
Again from Sumbawanga, villagers have threatened to kill teachers of a ward secondary school if they keep pestering them to stop farming in the school’s yard. Awesome! These guys down there really don’t value life.
The story goes like this. The school is located in a land that once belonged to the villagers and was used as farming land. Village authorities later decided to allocate the land for the construction of a secondary school and the villagers were promised another are for their activities. The authorities never lived up to their promise and now the teachers have to face the villagers’ wrath.
The only problem is that the school caters for the same villagers’ children. Apparently the villagers did not want to be in a fix and swiftly decided that bread is better than brain so to hell with school. They had rather sever the teachers’ heads than put up with their constant whining over non-substance issues.
I may not know much, but I know one thing is for sure, those guys down south need serious help and soon. You just don’t go about killing people because of you have differences, that’s just so medieval! Heck, if that were to be the case we would all have been dead by now.
kmtambalike@yahoo.com