The Poor Deserve A Decent Send Off

Jun 13, 2002

Does someone out there have a house to rent? If you do, well get in touch with me because the house I'm living in is haunted. Haunted by mosquitoes that are immune to Doom.

By Eunice NabalayoDoes someone out there have a house to rent? If you do, well get in touch with me because the house I'm living in is haunted. Haunted by mosquitoes that are immune to Doom. I had always known mosquitoes that love the dark, that hum around my left ear, reminding me how they are still interested in marrying me. But I always refused to kiss any such mosquito, and flung a bed sheet over my head to shut out their love song. However, the mosquitoes in the house which I rent, are odd. They storm in during the day as soon as you open the windows to a bright new day. They swarm towards the sofas, when they see male guests and dance over the heads, humming: “We still want to marry her.” Within minutes of their sitting, the visitors look at their watches and get up to leave. The mosquitoes wait for us to get into bed, then terrorise our arms legs and faces, as soon as we get to bed.I had often wondered where these mosquitoes came from, since instead of grass, I have concrete for a garden. The next door neighbour moved out a few months ago, mentioning a little too late (for we had already settled in), where they came from.“It's the graveyard which attracts the mosquitoes,” he said.“What graveyard?”“That unslashed bush across the road,” he said.So one day, as I pushed my body through the small hatch in the maroon gate, I saw across the gate, quite close to the Monitor Head office, a group of around 20 men who had cleared a patch of the bush to bury one of their dead. No grave stone, no fence to mark their graveyard — just a group of men in tattered clothes, some with Muslim caps, perhaps whose ancestral homes are an unaffordable distance away, standing with heads bowed, eyes focussed into the hole. Buveera of matooke peelings, mark the edges of this graveyard which KCC has designated for the wretched of the earth — here, where hungry dogs loiter.I gathered my household and stated: “Perhaps the dead are revolting over their burial ground through this swarm of mosquitoes. How can KCC designate a cemetery in the midst of a housing estate? Surely even the poor deserve a decent send off.”They laugh at my weird deduction.Ends

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