The Crazy Man

On our trip to the Equator, we met a crazy man. Unfortunately, in African countries, there is no place for those that no longer maintain full facilities “upstairs.” He was sitting on the porch of the little “restaurant” we had taken a break at, before headed back to Kampala. He was harming anyone, but he was obviously carrying on a conversation with himself. The trouble didn’t start until the police officer walked up. The military police officer asked what he was doing and the Crazy man responded that Museveni told him that he could be there… (Musevini is the President of all of Uganda). This response hardly helped the man’s claim to be there, nevertheless the confrontation escalated quickly because of the rifle that the officer was waving around.

The end result was nothing short of shocking. When a couple more soldiers came over and joined their friend and with stick began to beat him off of the porch. They were joined with two other “civilians” joined them, one of which had just served us coffee. See, now that the initial officer needs to “save face.” He can’t just walk away and let this man be because we as Muzungu (white people) have just seen his failed attempt to exert his authority. So this group of Ugandan’s beat this poor man all the way down the street. A slow, brutal, excruciating, retreat of a crazy man, who I will never know what the ultimate result was.

My heart truly broke. Here is a child of God; made by God; loved by God, and here are men beating him, because he was in a place they didn’t want him. I wanted to intervene; to stand between the soldier and this poor man. And to be honest, what was more scary then the “crazy man” was the military police officer that caused the whole “intervention;” waving his gun around. We could all see the image of a stray bullet killing an innocent bystander. We all exited the porch not because of the insane actions of the mentally disabled, but rather the of a egotistical man with a gun. So I guess in the end, who really turned out to be the “lunatic?”