Mourners flee after man turns up at own burial

A cocktail of drama engulfed Itakaibolu Village in Kaliro District on Tuesday when a graveside wag turned up at what was supposed to be his own funeral.
Asadi Ndekeire had arrived at the funeral skunk drunk and had been restrained from saying a word by his equally drunk friends.
After the coffin had been lowered into the grave, the drunken party staggered to send off the deceased by also pouring soil into the grave.
And that was when it happened.

“He was a good man who made everyone laugh outside,” Ndekeire said in his farewell words.
“But inside the home, he was a weak man who was always crying like a baby because his fat wife pounded him like traditional cassava.”
The voice was very familiar. Everyone turned to confirm whose it was they had heard. Then there was a woman’s scream renting the air. Everything broke loose as the mourners fled for dear lives.

In the pandemonium, Ndekeire had sobered up like Frank Gashumba seeing “Kony”, running as fast as his legs – or rather the alcohol – could take him.
But both the alcohol and the legs couldn’t take Ndekeire far enough. A group of brave men in the village soon caught up with him, picked him for the muddy puddle he had slipped and fallen in, and dragged him back to the village like a goat that still wanted to eat cassava leaves in the farm.
The family had lost contact with Ndekeire for several days, which was usual. But then a sugarcane truck had knocked a man dead not far from a bar where Ndekeire was a regular patron.

From the mortuary in Iganga District, relatives only saw a gray sweater and “confirmed” it was Ndekeire. The body they were seeing was defaced and badly mangled.
Ndekeire had gained notoriety in the village and beyond for always demanding mourners speak “only absolutely the truth” at funerals. 
With a glib tongue, he would make up stories about the dead, sometimes even those he did not even know in life, especially at vigils.
So when he showed up late at the funeral, his drunken buddies kept pulling him down whenever he attempted to stand up or to speak.
“He didn’t pay his debts…” Ndekeire started to say at one time when the priest said the deceased was a responsible man when his drunken party put hands on his mouth and pleaded with him to stay solemn for once.

His chance to say something came as the mourners were throwing soil into the grave. But it turned out to be a bad chance.
After taking in a proper beating on the orders of the elders, the mourners had to confront the hard question: whose remains was that they had already interred into the grave?
“Just cover the grave so that I become the first man to bury himself,” Ndekeire said.
He said he had been “abducted by money lenders” who he found “watching video clips of Gashumba’s gross kissing.”
At the time of making this story up, the police were also still laughing their hearts out.

Disclaimer: This is a parody column