There was grief written all over faces of hundreds of people that gathered at Lumwira Village, Traditional Authority T/A Nankumba, in Mangochi to witness the burial of three men that died while trying to save a cow that was trapped in a 15-metre well.
Women and men could not hold back tears after the men, who had gone into the well one-by-one, failed to return.
Group Village Head Sosola on Sunday said a cow belonging to Gerald Yusuf of Lumwira Village fell into the well, and the herd boy, now deceased, reported the incident to Yusufu who was then in Dedza.
On return, Yusuf told his the 17-year-old herdboy Mathews Juju of Masese Village, T/A Masasa, in Ntcheu to hire men to remove the cow from the well before it died.
“The herd boy engaged some men who started the work immediately. We did not know that they would lose their lives in the process. The hired men instructed the herd boy to go inside the well to tie the cow with a rope so that they could easily pull it up. The herd boy, at first, managed to go there and tied the cow and came out alive,” Sosola said.
But when the men started pulling out the cow, the rope snapped. The men instructed the boy to return to the well and tie the cow again.
After refusing to enter the well again, the boy succumbed to pressure and entered the well again. This time, he did not return.
This forced 45-year-old Samson Khobidi to follow suit but, he too, did not return from the well, prompting other people to seek help, but few were willing to intervene.
But Village Head Saidi Matola, real name Uzii Chiwoko, followed the people and he, too, died, Mangochi Deputy Police spokesperson, Amina Daudi, said.
“When he entered well, he tried to come back but fell back into the well midway while on his way up. That is how he died. The other people used a hook to pull the deceased’s bodies and the cow out,” Daudi said.
Postmortem conducted at Nankumba Health Centre established that the three died due to suffocation.
Source : The Times Group
