‘My boda guy cut off my dreads and nearly raped me’

Picture a venue humming with anticipation, the air thick with the scent of exclusivity. The guest list included the who’s who of Kampala’s social class; celebrities, socialites, influencers – all gathered under one roof. Cameras were staged in all corners not just to capture the moments but also scoop fodder for tabloid gossip. It was going to be a night where laughter and glamour collided in a dazzling display of star power. 

Back home, Nakitende breastfed her eight-month-old baby before rushing off to her workstation at STV where she was doing her internship. Her plan was to do her assignments fast and complete them by 3pm so that she could dedicate the rest of the evening and night to the surprise party. The venue at Garden City had to be paid for and decorated, the birthday cake had to be picked from the baker and a few calls had to be made to swear people to secrecy as she invited them to the party.

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As someone who was trying to make a mark on the gossip television landscape herself, Nakitende convinced her superiors to allow her attend the party with some television equipment so that she could also cover the celebrity birthday for her station. At 5pm, Nakitende and her co-conspirators met at the venue and planned how to ensure there were enough guises to lure Green to his birthday party without him finding out. 

Nakitende would spend the evening not only running the party but also shooting videos worthy of a good gossip TV show.

“While there was so much fun and celebration going on, I was personally not feeling the vibe, for no apparent reason at all. I just felt like something was off and I could not put a finger to it. So I figured that if I left early and went home to my baby, my heart would be at peace again,” Nakitende says. 

It had just clocked 9pm when Nakitende decided to leave the party. Her friends were angry with her because the night was still young and the party, which was her idea, was just starting. Green tried to convince her to stay promising to drop her off but she had a pounding headache on top of the eerie feeling. 

“I called Isma, my boda guy, to come pick me. I was not worried about moving at night because Isma had become family. I trusted him. He knew my home, he knew my baby, He was not a jumpy youth. He was a responsible family man, probably in his late 30s.” “When he arrived, Green escorted me to the parking lot to meet Isma because I had heavy TV equipment, so I needed a hand as well as security between the venue and the parking lot,” she says.

The betrayal At the parking lot, Nakitende sat on the boda boda with her equipment and Isma set off for Nagalama, Mukono. She was not worried about doing such a long distance on a night boda because she was with Isma, her trusted boda guy. Not for any longer, though. They had barely gone three kilometres when Nakitende’s whole world turned upside down. 

Somewhere in the posh residential area of Naguru, where streets are abandoned at night, where the cold, high concrete walls on both sides of the road almost cause claustrophobia, where night pedestrians are as rare as stray dogs, Nakitende trustingly leaned her pounding head on Isma’s back. She ignored the tepid smell of old sweat and was praying to reach home fast enough when suddenly, a man jumped out of a dark spot and onto the back of their boda.

He grabbed her neck and started strangling her while the boda was still moving. She felt like she had been hit by a train. Everything seemed to explode out of thin air. She had never felt such shock. By the time Isma was ‘forced’ to stop the boda, there were four men in total, swarming around the boda like a pack of hungry hyenas. They wanted everything on Nakitende, even if it meant killing her. That eerie feeling she had felt all evening finally made sense.

“Isma pretended to be taken aback at first but he could not keep the act going for long. He parked his boda and helped the others remove all the TV equipment from me. Then he took over the strangling job himself. I begged him to remember how far we had come. I reminded him about my baby, the baby he had met many times. I begged him to not kill me, but he just tightened the grip.”

As Nakitende lost consciousness and fell to the ground, Isma’s betrayal was more painful than all the physical harm she had suffered. While she was knocked out by the chokehold, she was not completely unconscious.

She could still see the gang but in a haze. She could still hear the voices of the five men as if they were far away. She saw Isma try to open her pants but she could not fight back. She was completely limp, as if dead. But she was aware of everything. Fortunately, her pants were very tight and tough to remove, so he failed and gave up. As the attempted rape failed, she thanked God. 

“Isma suspected that I was still alive so he suggested that they finish me because I knew him and my survival would mean bad news for him. Then another guy who was wearing a mask told them that I was already dead and they should not waste time,” she narrates.

After making sure they had bagged all the TV equipment, her phone and her handbag which contained only Shs30,000, it was time to take the most prized item.

“Isma and I had often joked about how valuable my dreadlocks were. At the time, dreadlocks were in high demand and talk was that people were willing to pay millions for them. Isma would say, ‘eh, your dreads are as long as ropes. You are carrying money on your head,’ and we would both laugh.”

Before they left, Nakitende says Isma pulled a pair of scissors from his jacket, cut off her hair and bagged her dreadlocks.

"That is when it occurred to me that he had truly been behind the attack,” she says. Everything happened so fast. As they left, Isma rode his motorcycle over her left leg, around the knee area, watching for any movement. Ironically, the brutish test that convinced Isma that Nakitende was dead, is the very thing that saved her life. She had been on the very cusp of death that she did not feel any pain. 

As he was riding his bike over her leg, coincidentally, at that very moment, a car just curved a corner about 100 metres away and as it approached the scene, the gang fled.

“There was a couple in the car and when they saw me on the ground, they came out and checked if I was alive. By this time, my injured leg was ballooning out of shape. They put me in their car and rushed me to a clinic in Ntinda. My phone had been taken but I could recall Green’s contact off head. I dialled his number on the couple’s phone and told him what had happened to me. He rushed to the clinic,” she says.

Her friends stayed with her through the night but she was getting worse. They called her live-in boyfriend and after a shouting match that was dominated by the boyfriend, the friends drove her to St Francis Nagalama Hospital, which was closer to her place. 

They arrived at around 6am and managed to see a doctor immediately. Nakitende was admitted and she would stay in the hospital for three months. 

“The veins in my neck were collapsed by the strangling. Parts of my brain were not receiving enough oxygen and so I could not think straight. For three months, I was lost. All I ever talked about was the night of the attack, screaming for help, begging Isma not to kill me. My brain was sick. They told me one of my veins was faulty. I fully recovered after three months. My leg was also getting better, though I was still limping,” Nakitende says.

When she returned to her boyfriend, she could not catch a break, especially from his sister. Her boyfriend had told her not to go to the party the night of the attack and this became a weapon against her. Her baby had been inadvertently weaned because of her long stay in hospital. The baby did not even remember her. Painful. Nakitende had returned to a house devoid of love. She knew that she could not survive in this cold environment while also dealing with the demons of her extreme trauma.

“So, after about a week, I fled to my father’s house, leaving the baby with her father. I loved my baby but they could not let me leave with her, yet I needed to be out of that house,” she says. 

Her people tried to trace Isma in vain. He must have discovered that Nakitende had survived so he went into hiding. All Nakitende could do was pray that Isma receives revenge for what he had done to her. She cried every day.

Karma is a b****

One day, about five months after that terrible night, as she was scrolling through social media, a familiar face popped up. It was Isma in a video clip captured by CCTV cameras in the exact spot in Naguru where she had been attacked. Isma was attacked by the same gang that he worked with to attack her. As she watched, Nakitende could not believe her eyes.

“God had answered my prayers. What made it even more surreal and movie-like is the fact that they killed him from the very spot. After killing him, they rode off with his boda. I do not enjoy seeing someone die, but I was happy to see Isma go like that,” she says.

Like the ending of a great movie, Nakitende watched as the filthiest villain of her life met a worthy death. She sighed with relief and felt her trauma lift, and her anger dissipate. For the first time since that terrible night, her mind cleared. Today, six years after betrayal from her boda guy, Nakitende barely ever takes boda bodas. Under no circumstances would she ever take a night boda. Even if God punished her attacker, the trauma of that night is still alive. As for her dreadlocks, she has never grown them back.

He took over the strangling job himself. I tried to appeal to not ruin our friendship of two years. I reminded him about my baby, the baby he had met many times. I begged him to not kill me, but this made him tighten the grip.