Until aloud scream from the lavatory area disrupted our snores and the unintentional realizes of carbon dioxide, Friday night had been silent. 

More bizarre about this night was that at 11pm, the power cuts forced every one into a state of panic due to scary situations from the peach black shadows.

Being a girl’s school, most of us only knew to reach for the covers and tuck ourselves in from head to toe by holding onto pillows for dear life.

As if covering ourselves made us invisible despite the fact that we breathed loud and deep. And if you listened closely, I swear you could hear the sound of cowardice; hearts beating uncontrollably fast.

By morning, we had heard a detailed, obviously exaggerated and yet very scary story about one student’s encounter with a very large, one-breasted woman. And we would have believed the story had it not been for the fact that the storyteller was known for crying ‘wolf!’

Thinking of Melissa Kemigabo now, I wonder why no one thought to take her for psychiatric evaluation. That girl’s head, for sure, was filled with people who were in the habit of making her hear and see things that were fictional.

There was a night she swore she had seen a long-horned dog. They tried to convince that she might have seen a deer or a calf or even a goat but the girl adamantly declared that it was a dog. She swore that the dog had barked at her and even chased her.

Curious, students went out in search of the long-horned dog. They found it. Only that, it wasn’t a dog. It was a goat that had escaped from the school farm.

Therefore, her story about a large, one-breasted woman was widely dismissed as folktale. But when another student was revived from unconsciousness the following night only to tell of a similar encounter, we lost our nerves.

You see, we had heard many terrible tales of a large, one-breasted woman waging war on the government, kidnapping children and cutting off their body parts, and then disappeared into thin air. It was actually said that of her many supernatural abilities, disappearing was one of them.

I know now that she was not one-breasted and that she didn’t disappear into oblivion. But back then, I didn’t have the wisdom to differentiate folktale from reality; I was gullible.

This gullibility was only fueled by ignorance. Sadly, most of us were wired that way. Facts and evidence just didn’t count. And being the dramatic, overly emotional bunch that we were, we always found a way to make mountains out of anthills.

Anyway, we reported to the school administration that we were under attack and that the attack was being made by the infamous rebel leader herself.

To our disappointment, the school administration didn’t take the matter as gravely as we had expected. We assumed they didn’t care about our safety. Some people called their parents. Others just sat down and cried.

Someone called the police.

The situation was getting out of hand and so an emergency assembly was called. During this meeting, the headmistress introduced a new teacher, Mrs Kworekwa. She was a large, one-breasted woman.