A Ugandan man has taken revenge on a crocodile that ate his wife and their unborn child, by killing it. He is now a local hero.
Pregnant Demeteriya Nabire was at Uganda's Lake Kyoga with other women of her village to fetch water, when the massive beast grabbed her and dragged her away, her husband Mubarak Batambuze told BBC. Devastated by the loss of his wife and an unborn child, Batumbuze waited for over four months to take revenge on the crocodile.
"The crocodile ate my wife entirely. Nothing was ever seen of her again - no clothes, no part of her body that I could identify. I just didn't know what to do - a mother and her unborn child. It was the end of my world. I was completely lost," the 50-year-old fisherman said.
Last month, a villager called him to tell that the crocodile was seen in the same river. "He (the crocodile) was a very big monster, and we tried fighting him with stones and sticks. But there was nothing we could do," Batambuze said. So he got a local blacksmith to make a spear. It cost him $5, quite big for him.
However, his friends told him that the spear, which had a barb on one side, was not enough to kill the crocodile. But the undeterred fisherman was firm in his resolve. "I'm not bothered if I die killing this beast. I'm going to take it on with this spear, and I will make sure that it dies," Batambuze told his friends.
When he went into the river, the crocodile was still there. Batambuze struck the spear to the crocodile's side, while his friends attacked it with stones. He recalled: "It turned violent, and then there was so much fear in the place. But I was so determined, and I wasn't afraid of dying. I just wanted it dead," he explained.
He and his friends struggled for about an hour and a half and finally killed it.
Oswald Tumanya, a Ugandan Wildlife Authority ranger told BBC that the beast was over four metres long and weighed about 600 kg.
The locals were grateful to Batambuze and his friends for killing the crocodile. "We're sure it would have taken somebody else. Thank you so much, you did a great job," Batambuze recalls the villagers telling him.
