Very often we see the best in people. It is not possible to imagine that one wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Well, I am going to meet absolutely horrendous people today, I do not think I am going to like them.” Even if one is socially challenged and inclined to be cynical, one does not wake up with expectations that today, tomorrow, or even ever, someone is going to be rude to you spontaneously. That is not how human nature works. Human nature and philosophy and so forth, do not have a whole chapter dedicated to premeditated evil deeds. That is why, millions of years later, after the first brother killed his sibling, humans still gasp at an act of murder. Well, this is a little wake up call, to all of you butterflies and rainbow folks out there. Next to you, in that taxi and maybe even on that motorcycle you have hopped onto to avoid traffic, you are traveling with a murderer, a thief, or a rapist. It may sound paranoid and morbid, but we all need to look out for each other all the time. So yeah, the guy could be a monster, and you will be none the wiser as he nibbles away at the little self-esteem you had secreted somewhere with your relatively slow enzymes. (They have to be slow; otherwise you would have noticed that this sheep is actually a wolf in expensive Dior Lamb wool, to put a spin on an overused cliché.) Yes, recently, a girl at a certain Ugandan university was gang raped by a group of hoodlums formerly referred to as best buddies. The girl and the guys used to do everything together. They used to look out for her, and even her dating choices were governed by the opinions of these boys. One day, she took a tad too much to drink and as she had an apparent lack of female friends to take care of her, she turned to the ‘Motley Crew’ and entrusted them with herself, believing that they were noble, as she had no doubt they were judging from prior experience. At first all went well, they took her to their hostel and gave her a bed to sleep in as well as some water and pills to reduce her hangover in the morning. All was well; they settled down and turned off the light. As if demon possessed, later that night, they got up, stripped her naked and had their way with her. She was helpless to stop them. She cried all night and day for a full month, and the parents and University staff dubbed it “Cruel and Inhumane” but then when have people ever acted human? The disabled laugh at the paralyzed; a leper mimics a mute’s actions. That should not be that case but it usually is. The boys were arrested by University police and later remanded, but the damage had been done. A wolf had triumphed. She would never trust another man for as long as she lived.
