As this journal has become a part of my experience here in Mozambique, I often see during the day a moment that I'd like to capture in this journal for others and for myself.
This time, I think it's as much for me as it is for everyone else, to come to terms with what happened today - an event on the fringes of the nicely packaged "Peace Corps Experience" that so many people see my experiences as.
I was, more or less, a far too close witness of a murder today. I feel less safe tonight than I did this morning, but I don't feel in danger. If that were the case, I would not be writing from my house. Melodramatics aside, I don't know exactly how to write about this, but I'm going to give it a shot.
I was in the middle of my 5th period class this afternoon, my next-to-last class of the day, teaching about the endoplasmic reticulum, which is a part of the eukaryotic cell.
In midsentence, we all heard a loud crash of glass breaking followed by gasps - a familiar noise for me, as it seemed like someone had dropped a cup, a beaker, or some other object. What I didn't notice then was the lack of immediate laughter, which at school, is omnipresent. Regardless, I went into "take control of the situation even though you have no idea what's going on" mode.
I told the students to stay inside the room, and until I opened the door to see what was going on, they obeyed. Standing outside the door to the room next to mine, no more than 10 feet from where I had just been standing, was a teenaged boy with a broken bicycle chain, standing intensely by his work, a broken window of a door.
I thought that it was pretty strange, but was just a kid being a nuisance and vandalizing the school. My first instincts were to let other people take care of matters and try to calm him down - in Changana - but before I could figure out what to do, my students ran and grabbed him, pulling him away from the door and the professor who had been showered with broken glass but was unhurt. They seemed to have control of the situation, and other professors helped out.
I considered - very briefly - helping subdue the kid, but wisely thought better of it. No sense in being a "hero" where there's no such thing.
At that point, I figured it was best that I try and corral my kids - at the very least to reduce commotion and the prospect of a fight breaking out. I went back into the room, which is a fairly universal sign that the professor is ready, so you should be, too.
A couple students joined me, and I sat inside shooting the breeze with them. One came in and asked if I was afraid and I confidently said no - although I wasn't quite sure. Every so often, there were some screams and people running in one direction or another. It was obvious that the kid had freed himself and was threatening people with the chain.
I stepped outside to see what I could do to get my kids back inside and out of harm's way, but I saw that another group of people had formed around a downed bicycle and presumably the owner of the bicycle.
The kid was still free, and drawing an ever-growing crowd. I realized at this point that it was hopeless, but with my students being fairly jovial with each other and demonstrating curiosity more than anything else, that it wasn't anything to worry about. I did start to worry, though, when one student came over and asked me if I saw what happened.
Thinking I had, I said yes. He seemed to plead with me, in English, that someone was dying.
I started to ask questions of those around me and it seems that the kid who was on the bike was stabbed by the kid who broke the window. He was stabbed in the abdomen, from what I remember from anatomy in the general area of the liver or large intestine. I don't know what happened first, but juding by the screams, my best guess is that he brandished the knife while being held and stabbed someone to free himself.
I heard later that he, in fact, had too knives, generally known to be mentally unstable, and lives in my neighborhood.
A couple minutes later, students from my class were carrying the injured kid to a car to get him to the hospital. There was no obvious bleeding, but he wasn't in good shape.
A few minutes after this, the police got hold of the stabber and took him away.
Rumors immediately began to fly as to who this kid was and why he did what he did. The most accurate and believable one is that he was simply insane and decided to go on a rampage. Other rumors have to do with revenge for violence in the classroom by the professor whose door he shattered.
The fact that the rumors were there makes me wonder about students' true perceptions of violence in the classroom and its acceptance.
On the way to my Changana lesson tonight, no more than 2 1/2 hours after all of this, we learned that the victim had died. We weren't shocked, but that's when it hit me.
Some other students of mine cursed their race - saying that Africans are always killing each other. They asked if this ever happens in America, to which I could only respond, "All the time". They didn't believe me at first, but it was easy to see that what they at first thought was a reaction of "Those Africans..." on my part was actually, "Not here, too..." and seemed to understand.
The truth is, I don't understand.
Peace
John
