I go down this road a million times each day. I hate myself each time I go down this road. I shall now take you down this road.

Four years ago precisely, I saw a man in a forest near my village. His legs were killing him, they hurt badly. He had a deep machete cut right across the shin bone of one leg and on the other; the ankle seemed to be twisted. He was in too much pain he couldn’t even move his upper body. Added to that, the circumstance that got him into that state did not allow him room to scream for help. He just winced and winced more.

When he saw me approaching, he employed all else he had to plead for my assistance. He made pleading gestures of rubbing his palms together at me, he made deeply sympathy-drawing facial expressions and some mumbled words to win me. He begged me like I was the lord of his life.

I knew how to help him. I could carry him on my shoulders, though he was a hefty man. I could then take him to the village, to somewhere he can be taken proper care of. He could be handicapped forever, but he would live –he wanted to. That would have been the right thing to do…but I did not do it.

Over the years, I’ve made a pathetic defense of how I acted that day by saying stuff like, ‘Well, I’m only human,’ but when you look at it, even the vilest of humans would fault me.

My name is Reuben Nduma, I just turned 39 eleven days ago. It means I shall have decades of this one tormenting memory ahead. I live in the little village of Lujulu, 29 miles south of Yei in the southern region of South Sudan, somewhere near the DR Congo border.

In May 2001, I got married to Sarah, the daughter of the village’s school headmaster. Sarah was dangerously beautiful. By my standards, she was the most beautiful woman in the whole of Lujulu. Everyone thought she would marry one of the rich and better-looking men in town. She chose me instead, what she saw in me I always wonder.

Things started out well for us on our way to having the most enviable matrimonial union mankind ever saw. Our first year together was the most blissful of my life. In that year, we had our first daughter. Shortly after that, things drastically moved from a sweet romance to a bad, bad scary movie.

It all started with a shameful rumor. Men talked about it in drinking joints, women gossiped about it in markets. Young girls and boys jeer to it on their way to the stream. No one said it to my face until the day a friend decided to make me stop looking the fool. It was believed that Sarah was having an affair with Nduak Eboula.

Now, Eboula was the kind of man you do not want to start an argument with, let alone a fight. He was one of the most powerful men in my little village. He oppressed the weak and allied with the strong. Eboula was the face of impunity in my village. We feared him and will always for wisdom’s sake let him have his way, no matter how painful it is.

When I heard the rumor, what I thought was, if God forbids, it turns to be true, will I ever find a way to confront Eboula? What powers do I have to call into use to make him pay or even stop? There was none I could think of.

He had all the powers in his hands. If I decide to go physically, he was stronger. He could drag me to the village square and literally beat ego out of every DNA in me. What if I choose to take the case to the village’s elders meeting? Eboula was so influential he could make everyone of them publicly confess the sky was dusty brown and the earth blue.

There was no way I would stop him. I only began to hope the rumor was false. To a large extent, I trusted Sarah, so it had to be false. I was wrong. A few days later, she was caught in bed with him.

Our family shame was made public. Sarah was booed everywhere she went. I was pitied by the men for being the unfortunate husband of the woman Eboula fancied. They advised me to have a divorce or he would kill me. It costs nothing, I only had to go before the shrine of our ancestors and declare that Sarah has brought shame to me and my kinsmen and so would cease to be my wife. It would be stamped by the gods, ancestors and the living of Lujulu.

I seriously contemplated that path, but Sarah begged. She said what she did was completely out of her will. She claimed he threatened her in many ways if she refused. How can I begin to see her as a victim here? It was hard. I did not know what to believe, but I knew Sarah was still worth the world to me. I forgave her and we began the thorny process called moving on.

It was not easy for me. Every day, every night, as long Sarah’s voice was there to be heard and her face to be seen, I remember the hurt I felt. I remember how she betrayed me. I imagined her in his arms, on his bed…those thoughts, those pictures formed by my imaginations of them together, they kill me slowly. Yet, Eboula, the terror to the weak and friend to the strong, walked the streets like nothing ever happened.

We did our best to continue to live as one family till early 2008. Those scarily recognizable signs began to reappear in Sarah. Those same things she used to do when she was having that affair with Eboula, she began to do them again. A walk to the stream or a trip to the market began once again to take two hours more than usual. Also, they must now be done after dusk.

The few times I tried talking to her on these observations, she said I was being unnecessarily over protective and childishly over possessive. She said she was trying to have a good time with friends all the evenings she stayed out late. I might not have had a proof in black and white, but my gut told me there was no other friend outside Eboula and the good times she talked about were spent on his bed.

This time, I had made up my mind that if my suspicion was by any means confirmed, there was no amount of begging that would keep her a minute longer in my house. I would head straight to the shrine of my ancestors and make those fateful declarations once and for all.

The last months of that year were when the LRA was wrecking havoc in our region with reckless abandon. They had raided several villages around, so we knew that Lujulu was pushing up on their target list. How soon? We did not know, but we knew that day would be just as nasty as the other villages had it.

It is often said by the elders in Lujulu that a scheduled war does not consume the wise. With the help of a friend, I moved my daughters to Darfur. The one we had in 2001 and the second, who bears a heart-wrenching resemblance to Eboula’s eldest daughter. I was certain Joseph Kony cannot touch them there. I was also making plans for I and Sarah to move, but before I could put that plan to work, that bloody day came.

It was in the early hours of the day, the 18th of Nov. 2008. I still had a little sleep to sweep out my head. Sarah had stopped sharing our bed with me, so she slept in the other room.

First, I heard distant screams, then close ones.

I jumped out of my bed. Then I heard a few gunshots nearby. The screams on the background never stopped. There was then a loud noise inside my house like the door in the room Sarah slept was forced down.

I heard her scream.

A very short scream.

That was all I heard from her. I was a little slow in deciding whether to run away or to go help her. We knew how the LRA operated. They kill the men and abduct the women and children. If they had guns and machetes, there was absolutely nothing I could do to help her.

I decided to run. I escaped through the window. Two or more LRA fighters quickly went after me. I took the road to the stream, an area I was sure I knew so well. That was the reason I was able to lose my chasers.

It was in the middle of that forest while I was escaping that I saw that wounded man. I took a closer look. Of all the people in Lujulu, it was my greatest enemy. Mr. Impunity-is-my-style Eboula. He desperately needed my help. We could hear the sound of the approaching LRA fighters. They were quite a distance away. I could lift him and take him back to the village without being seen by the fighters.

I began to think, does this dirty man deserve my help? Does he deserve to live? What angered me the most was the way he was asking for my help as if he had no idea how he tortured me daily.

On the floor nearby, I saw a machete. I picked it up. I could just slit the cat’s throat and be done with it. Then again I thought, does he deserve a quick death?

No. I dropped the machete. The LRA men were nearer now. I would allow them finished the job as they wish.

I turned my back on him.

He began to cry, calling my name. I listened to hear him say he was sorry for what he did to me. He did not say it. I hid and watched the LRA men kill him in the most horrible way imaginable. I then walked away telling myself he deserved his fate.

Today, Lujulu has been resettled. Eboula’s children have returned from the refugee camp they were moved to. My children are back from Darfur and Sarah did not return alive from Kony’s abduction.

I go down this road every time I see the faces of Eboula’s children and wife and that of my second girl.

I am constantly reminded of the day the gods handed me a rare chance to be transcended into their higher realm. A chance to act like divinity, a chance to forgive in an extraordinary fashion, a chance I blew.