By David Oduut
In 2003, a 28-year-old carpenter and construction worker Moses Igira returned home from Bukedea town council where he was roofing a commercial house with his friends.
Igira was a man quick in making jokes and loved to laugh but in the evening of 17th January 2003, things were different, he had instead returned while complaining of a stomach upset.
Little did the family members know that they were seeing him for the last time. At midnight on the same day, he was rolling and coiling in unbearable pain and by 7 am on January 18th, there was sore wailing at his home for he was a lifeless man.
The autopsy report read during his burial indicated that a chemical had eaten up his intestines and tore his liver, a sign that he had died as a result of poisoning.
“He left behind two widows and five orphans who have since struggled with life after losing a husband, father and breadwinner,” a family member who did not want to be named said before adding, “the children of the late have not been able to attain proper education since there is no one to pay their school fees.”
How Igira was poisoned!
Margarita Olepus, the mother to the late reveals that on the
fateful day, her son had set out to roof a commercial house in Bukedea town
which he had won a tender to construct.
The late, together with five of his workers (whom she declined to name) arrived
at work and as usual took roles at the site.
“However, it is at lunch time that my son sent his workers ahead of him to a
restaurant where they had meals. Knowing that he usually started by having a
cup of milk before eating his lunch, two of his workers hired the restaurant
attendant with sh80,000 to laze the milk with poison,” 83-
year-old Olepus said.
“They hurried back to the site after witnessing him take a few sips of the poisoned milk,” Ms Olepus said while looking into space with eyes agonizing the pain of holding together the loss of her last born.
Much as it is 17 years since he passed away, she is still
sobbing that her son was killed by jealous workers who did not like him to
thrive and make orders.
Such stories have haunted Bukedea district for the past twenty years with
almost every family having a different testimony of having lost a member or
relative to food poisoning.
In 2010, poison reportedly ‘walked’ into Bukedea district headquarters after a
young Principal Personnel Officer at the district, Samuel Opio died after
eating food suspected to have been poisoned at a restaurant in Bukedea town;
and it is alleged that Opio was also killed due to work-
related wrangles.
Along the years the district leaders together with security
operatives have held fire response approach towards addressing the issue. They
notably make threatening utterances against the vise regrettably mostly at
burial places of victims and thereafter do little to seek and punish
perpetrators.
Few weeks ago, a similar spate struck again claiming the life of Betty Akello,
a young entrepreneur in Bukedea town who died suddenly and mysteriously but
sources believe she was also poisoned.
Police at Bukedea CPS has since opened investigations and a source at Bukedea
central police station says several people have made statements.
“Other than reducing poisoning to a matter of mere whisper in communities,
hundreds of people continue to die in the district every year,” Ms Mary Acom a
resident of Kide ward in Bukedea town council said.
Where does the Bukedea poison come from?
No one knows where the poison comes from but in the 1980s, a popular story of an old man called Emori, a fisherman and hunter from Kachede village in Kabarwa Sub-county allegedly poisoned 14 Karimojong herdsmen after they made it a habit to steal his pounded groundnuts.
Away from Mzee Emori’s story, poison was unheard of in
Bukedea until the early 2000s when reports emerged that poison believed to be
an extract from bile of a hippopotamus had crept in through black market from
landing sites in Teso sub-region notably; Kagwara, Ajiba in Serere
and Akide in Ongino sub county in Kumi district.
According to James Odengel, the LC1 Kocheka village in Kocheka Sub County, the fishing areas of Amodingot, a tributary from Lake Bisina in the border between Nakapiripirit and Bukedea also hides people with poison.
“There are people who are residing in the swamps in the sub counties of Kamutur, Kabarwa and Kangole in the Amodingot belt, they could have relocated there after poisoning several people and have since become direct suppliers of the poison,” Mr Odengel said.
In 2017, a woman in Koreng village in Kangole Sub County
confessed in a community meeting to have sold two cows to buy a spoonful of
poison from Tisai island in Ongino Sub County, for killing a neighbor whom she
accused of extending a land boundary into her piece of land.
Sergeant Simon Ecokit, the Community Liaison Officer at Bukedea Central Police
Station says that for over seven years of his deployment as a police officer in
the poison stricken sub-counties of Malera, Kolir and Kabarwa, it is alleged that
hunters and fishermen are the ones who supply
it.
“Poison which is usually bile of a python or that of a hippopotamus is supplied by hunters and fishermen who get access to kill these animals in the wild,” Mr. Ecokit said.
He added that it usually comes from the fishing and hunting grounds at the
border between Bukedea and Nakapiripirit district.
WHO IS POISON TARGETING IN BUKEDEA?
In 2017, an old man only identified as Ongolekol from Magara village in Kabarwa Sub County, confessed to killing eight people in a period of two months by lazing local gin locally known as Omoti with poison. According to him, they had delayed to pay back the money he loaned them.
“Some of them deserved to die because they failed to pay
back my money, and you cannot accuse me of killing them as you do not have any
evidence against me,” Mr. Ongolekol who was also a local money lender said
before being released from police custody.
However, Nicholas Odeke, a member of Bukedea Unification, a youth network
formed through WhatsApp platform to advocate for peace and unity in the
district says that people wielding poison in the district mostly target young
successful people.
“They are mostly after graduates and other young people who have just started
off with work,” Mr. Odeke said.
JEALOUSY AND FEAR
“It is sad that those that have failed in life will seek to
use poison to kill a successful son of a neighbor in order to level things,”
Odeke revealed.
A veteran journalist with a local newspaper who preferred anonymity, said he
has survived five attempts of food poisoning because he wrote critical issues
affecting locals.
“My friend, even writing bad stories about others in this
district will see you eat poison,” the reporter said before adding that
unregulated local bars and restaurants are couriers to the vise.
However, Mzee James Ariko of Kongunga town council in Kachumbala County, says
people in the district also kill each other due to land wrangles.
He disclosed that young people with money are the major target as they are likely to be heirs for disputed land as well as wield financial power to help their families win cases during land disputes.
WOMEN WRANGLES
Sergeant Ecokit revealed that men can also poison others
when they want to take over their wives.
“A man can poison another when he in love with the victim’s wife because he
wants to concubine her, once widowed,” Ecokit who also doubles as OC Kabarwa
for Police Post said.
WRONG PERCEPTION
Afande Ecokit also says that some people in the district die out of other illnesses like ulcers and high blood pressure but communities end up connecting the death to poisoning.
“Diseases like ulcers also tend to kill people in a short
time but locals always connect untimely deaths to poisoning,” Mr Ecokit said.
However, a health worker at Bukedea Health Centre IV who preferred anonymity
reveals that they have occasionally treated suspected cases of poisoning in the
facility.
“We do not get many cases here because poison victim prefers to rush to the
herbalists who make vomit it out.”
The health worker also accounts that in August 2019, first aid was given to two
children who were 14 and 17 years old, who were residents of Tank Cell, in Kide
Ward, Bukedea town. After receiving first aid, their father took them to
Ilaborot who gave them them an antidote and they vomited out.
The In-Charge for Bukedea Health Centre IV, Julius Osele denied to comment on the matter saying he is not the spokesperson of the health department at the district-but such is the fear poison has planted in Bukedea district, people even fear to give comments lest it may start hunting for you!
STORIES OF HORROR
Poison is much dreaded in Bukedea that it currently has
myths like; someone can put poison on animal ropes such that when the owner
later goes to untie them, touches it hence later finds its way to the mouth
while eating.
It is also said that in some villages, someone can deflate a victim’s bicycle
so that when they remove the valve, put in the mouth to put saliva to check
whether its working ends up swallowing poison.
Others claim that people can also put on a padlock while word has it that,
witches can also spread it in the grass at the roadside with hope that others
will get some of the grass for picking their teeth.
In Bukedea, some villages have also got war zone nicknames like Somalia, Darfur, and Bagdad among others attributing it to poisoning.
MOB JUSTICE
There have been incidents where mobs have lynched suspected people with poison
in community meetings after voting was held to name and shame suspects.
In 2018, police fired live ammunition in the air to rescue a woman from an
irate mob in Koreng village who accused her of poisoning her brother over land.
Afande Ecokit says police has over the years held community sensitization
meetings with locals to preach against poisoning.
“Much as it has not totally dealt with it, it has at least created awareness
and it has reduced now,” said Ecokit adding that, local politicians and
religious leaders are also doing their part.
However, Ecokit cries that the challenge remains that people do not want to
report suspects to those in security.
“People will only mumble at burial places but will never come up to report,”
Mr. Ecokit said
urging that communities should get bold enough to name suspects so that they
can face the law.
Mr. Moses Olemukan the Bukedea district Chairman says his office is ready to
take drastic measures to punish those got having poison in the district.
“We are not willing to play about with anybody got with poison as it is a local
problem. I can assure you that once got, one will have to drink it before
others so that they can be a testimony to how we do not want their bad acts,”
Olemukan said.
ANTIDOTE: The hope at the end of the story
In 2010, an old man only identified as Ilaborot from Kakere Gagama village in Bukedea sub county, discovered an antidote which if victims are rushed to him in less than 12 hours, can make them vomit out the poison.
Sadly, the old man died in 2017, but lucky enough, he had
taught his wife Mrs. Margaret Ilaborot on how to fix the concoction.
Mrs. Ilaborot reveals that she saves not less than 150 people each year.
And throughout the district, there are about three other people who can also
make a concoction of the antidote which can make a victim vomit out the poison.
When Aica contacted the two other saviors, they denied to go on record or to
give details of the ingredients of the antidote.
WHAT HEALTH OFFICE SAYS
Dr Steven Ikodet the Bukedea District Health Officer said his office does not have substantive data on cases related to food poisoning in the district but admits that it has been a health threat to many lives to the people in the district for several years.”I cannot give you figures but I must say that a number of patients have in the past years been received at various health centers across the district with poison related complications,” Mr Ikodet said.
He however said that extremes of non-communicable diseases like Ulcers and High blood pressure also pose similar symptoms to that of food poisoning a reason some deaths caused by them in the district have been refereed as poisoning.
“You know there is general lack of knowledge about diseases like ulcers or pressure and since they can also claim somebody’s life in a quick and painful bout, people in the district have always pointed fingures accusing others for being behind their death,” the DHO said before adding that ‘food poisoning is still a delicate matter to discuss in Bukedea that needs to be addressed’.
He advised that people should avoid risks of getting non communicable diseases by living and eating responsibly.
“You cannot be eating three kilograms of pork and drinking 10 bottles of beer every day and when you high blood pressure knocks you off and your relatives will claims that you have been poisoned. People need to eat well and do exercise to live longer,” Mr Ikodet said.
