In life, people always annoy each other to the extent that they become very violent leading to a fight which can sometimes lead to injury or death. At times it is very difficult to cool down a person who is very annoyed.
Some time back I went  to Sinda in the Eastern Province to visit some relatives who I had not seen for a very long time.
I usually visited Petauke and Chipata where my father and mother hailed from.
Since my mother passed on in 1993 and my father died in 2010, I have not been visiting these places although there are many close relatives of mine there.
When I go to Chipata or Petauke, I usually like to go to the hinterland where life is totally different from that obtaining at the bomas which now is similar to that experienced in big cities and towns across the country.
I got to the village and visited a number of relatives before I finally went to Sinda Stop to see my cousin who runs a business there.
When I got to my cousin’s farm I found that the place was deserted except for two workers who did not know me.
I introduced myself to them and although they seemed to believe that I was  the  cousin of the owner of the farm, they could not let me in the main house and could not keep me in  their one room mud thatched houses because they were married.
I could not go back to the village in the hinterlands as it was around 18.00 hours and transport was difficult to find around this time.
The alternative was for me to book a room in one of the  guest houses in the area. It was when I was leaving my cousin’s farm that my nephew –  my cousin’s son came.
After greetings, he told me he was going to the neighbouring village to attend funerals of three of his friends who had died in a fatal road traffic accident on the Great East Road.
The man told me that his father and mother would be away for a week or so and since these people would not be around, it would be better for me to spend some time at his place and so he asked me to go with him to the funeral house where he said we would not spend much time.
I thought this was a good idea, after all I would cut on expenses of spending money at the guest house.
We were at the funeral house at around 19.00 hours. So many bonfires had been lit  and many people gathered around them as it was quite cold.
The majority of the people who had gathered at this funeral were young men aged between 18 and 29 years. Most of these young men were seemingly drunk looking at the way they were behaving.
My nephew led me to one of the bonefires where there were decent elderly men although they also looked drunk.
“A Phiri saganiza bwino. Angatenge bwanji nkhwanga kuti apaye munthu wakufa kudala?”( Mr Phiri doesn’t think properly. How can he get an axe and try to kill someone who is already dead?)said one of the men.
Getting an axe to try and  kill someone who was already dead! As an eavesdropper, I thought this was interesting.
“Akanamukhoma ija nkhwa, akana bapasa mulandu wakupha munthu koma uja munthu anali wakufa kudala,”(had he struck at that man, he would have been charged with murder and yet that man had long been dead.
What could have happened? How could anyone try to kill someone who was already dead? I wondered.
I asked my nephew whether he knew what these elderly people were talking about and he told me that it had something to do  with the  deceased person who had died together with other two friends in the accident.
Fortunately, another elderly person who also didn’t know what the other men were talking about asked what they were talking.
It was at this point that one of the elderly men started to explaining what had happened.
According to the narrator, Mr Phiri (the man who wanted to axe the dead person) was very annoyed because the deceased had been involved in an accident using a Toyota Corolla which his son who was based in South Africa had bought for him.
Mr Phiri’s daughter had asked his father to lend her the car so that she could go and sort out an issue somewhere and as she was driving, she realised that one of the tyres had become deflated .
Luckily, she had not driven far and decided to take the car to the tyre mender who was operating at the main bus station in the area.
The tyre mender removed the tyre  and when he checked, he found that it had two holes .
While the man was mending the tyre, the young woman decided to take a walk so that by the time she returned the man would have finished mending the car.
After the  tyre mender had finished working on the tyre and fitted the wheel, he  discovered that the car key was in the ignition. The young woman had either forgotten to take the key with her or she had deliberately left it there.
The tyre mender got into the car and started it. Two of his friends jumped in.
From the bus station, the tyre mender connected onto the Great East Road and sped off.
Whether he was a competent driver or not, the narrator did not know but he explained that the man drove the car at cut-throat speed.
“Yenzondalala galimoto, baba. Dalaiva analephela kukoneka paja pa kevu,”(the car was flying, friends. The driver failed to negotiate that curve), explained the narrator as his friends who were listening intently shook their heads.
The man said after the tyre mender failed to negotiate, the car careered off the road and overturned several times until it rammed into a big tree and the vehicle was mangled beyond recognition.
The three men in the vehicle died instantly on the spot.
When the young woman came back to check on the tyre mender, she just head noise as people shouted, wailed and commented on the accident.
When she got to the scene of the accident, she realised that it was her father’s car – the one she had borrowed – which had been involved  in the accident.
When she went home to inform her father what had happened, the man picked an axe and rushed to the accident scene.
As he got there, he raised the axe in readiness to hit the tyre mender, but people at the scene managed to grab the axe from him and pulled him away from the bodies.
“Those people are already dead. Why do you want to bring yourself problems,” people told him, explained the narrator.
He said the man was very annoyed and seemed not to know what he was doing. It was then that he started explaining that her daughter borrowed the car and when she found that it had a puncture, she took it to the tyre mender.
The narrator said the man complained that the tyre mender was not even a mechanic and he saw no reason why he went on road test with the vehicle which was in tip top condition.
I then came to know why there were so many young people at this funeral and I felt sorry for Mr Phiri although I did not know the man.
I also came to know that this funeral  we were attending was for the tyre mender who had unnecessarily ended his and his friends’ life.
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