How I killed the crocodile that ‘ate my wife’

Four months ago, Demeteriya Nabire was
killed by a crocodile when she went to the
lake near her home to fetch water. The
animal later came back to the area but
found Nabire’s husband waiting, ready to
take revenge. Demeteriya Nabire was at the
water’s edge with a group of women from
her village – they were gathering water from
Uganda’s Lake Kyoga when the crocodile
grabbed her. It dragged her away and she
was never seen again.
Her husband, Mubarak Batambuze, was
devastated – Nabire was pregnant when she
died, and he had lost not only his wife but
an unborn child as well. He felt powerless.
But then last month he heard the crocodile
had returned. “Somebody called me and
said, ‘Mubarak, I have news for you – the
crocodile that took your wife is here – we
are looking at it now.’”
The 50-year-old fisherman made his way to
the lake with some friends. “He was a very
big monster, and we tried fighting him with
stones and sticks. But there was nothing we
could do,” he says.
So Batambuze went to visit the local
blacksmith.“I explained to him that I was
fighting a beast that had snatched and
killed my wife and unborn baby. I really
wanted my revenge, and asked the
blacksmith to make me a spear that could
kill the crocodile dead. “The Blacksmith
asked me for £3.20 ($5) and made the
spear for me,” he says. It was a significant
amount of money for Batambuze, but he
was determined to kill the animal that had
snatched his future.
“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.” Armed with his new
spear – specially designed with a barb on
one side – the widower went on the attack.
When he got to the water the crocodile was
still there, but Batambuze’s friends took
fright. “Please don’t attack this beast,” they
pleaded, “it’s so huge it may eat you. The
spear is not enough – it won’t finish the
job.” But Batambuze insisted they stay. “I
failed killing it the first time around,” he told
them, “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.”
A Ugandan Wildlife Authority ranger, Oswald
Tumanya, says the crocodile was more than
four metres long and weighed about 600kg.
“I had so much fear in me but what helped
me to succeed was the spear,” says
Batambuze. He tied a rope to the end of the
weapon so that once the tip was embedded
in the crocodile, he could pull it out at an
angle and the barb would cut into more of
the animal’s flesh.
“I put the spear into the crocodile’s side,
and while my friends were helping to throw
stones at the beast’s back, it tried getting
its mouth up to attack me again. “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,
so I put the spear in its side and I pulled the
rope. That got the crocodile into trouble.”It took an
hour and a half for
Batambuze
and his   friends,fighting and
retreating,   exchanging attacks with
the enraged
animal, before the crocodile was finally
dead. Exhausted, they made their way back
to their village. “There was so much shock.
What really surprised everybody was how
big the beast was. It wasn’t an ordinary
crocodile. It was so big. And people called
me and my friends heroes,” he says.
The dead animal was taken to Makarere
University in Kampala, where it was
examined by a vet, Wilfred Emneku. He says
a tibia bone was found inside the
crocodile’s stomach, but while he believes
it’s human he can’t be sure. A crocodile
expert at Charles Darwin University in
Australia, Adam Britton, says he would be
very surprised if any remains inside the
animal’s stomach were those of Demeteriya
Nabire.
“After 12 weeks… under normal conditions, it
would be highly improbable for bones from
the same meal to remain in the stomach,”
he says. So while Batambuze’s celebrity
status endures in his village, it is unlikely
that he will ever have a grave to mourn at.
“Within myself I’m a very depressed man
because I lost a wife and an unborn child,”
he explains.
“But the locals keep on saying, ‘Thank you
for killing the beast, that’s where we fetch
water and we’re sure it would have taken
somebody else. Thank you so much, you did
a great job.’” “So I’m a local hero – people
keep on thanking me.”