It was when they pulled out the machetes that I started to
worry.
I’d seen men with machetes in Africa before, but they were
rusty, practical tools used for clearing away brush by the side of the highway.
These were long, shiny and housed in decorative sheaths, pulled out ostensibly
so the men could sit down more comfortably, but done with a clear, understated
flair. They were more like sultan swords than jungle tools.
The kicking in my six-month pregnant belly had gone eerily
silent since we entered the vigilante court at Alaba. I reassured myself that I’d
been through things like this before. The time I went to visit Brazilian
entrepreneur Marco Gomes’ hometown in the crime-ridden slums of central Brazil,
comforted only by his reassurance that “No foreigner has ever died in my
hometown, because no foreigner has ever been to my hometown.” And the time I
was driving along the boarder between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of
Congo and armed Rwandan guards stopped our car, wordlessly got in the backseat
and hitched a ride for several miles.
