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 pull