FOR years, the old white bus stood sentinel by the Harare-Nyamapanda Highway in Mutoko South constituency.
Its once-vibrant colours faded to a dull sheen due to perennial exposure to different weather conditions.
The registration had long since expired and the tyres had flattened, as if the bus had surrendered to the weight of time.
Locals whispered stories of the bus’ past, how it had appeared seemingly overnight, without explanation or purpose.
This publication wrote on how the bus has been mysteriously parked at the area, near Magaya turnoff, but still intact despite attempts by thieves to strip it off.
No attempts to steal its parts were successful, leaving villagers concluding that it was a mysterious machine.
The bus became part of the community, not an eyesore, but a machine whose story of existence will be passed to next generations.
Some claimed to have seen shadowy figures lurking around it at dusk, while others spoke of strange noises coming from within.
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Then, on a sweltering September afternoon, mysterious flames erupted from the bus’ interior, engulfing it in a fiery shroud.
A cloud of smoke could be seen from as far as Murehwa Centre.
Onlookers from nearby homes converged at the scene in awe.
“What caused the fire?” they asked themselves as they watched, transfixed, the bus’ metal skin warping and melting, releasing secrets and mysteries into the smoke-filled air.
What sparked the inferno? Was it arson or something more sinister? And what secrets had the bus harboured for so long, only to be consumed by the very flames that freed them?
“I saw a cloud of smoke, only to realise that the bus was on fire,” recalled a villager, Ferlon Sigauke.
“We do not know what causes the fire. It is mysterious. Everything about this bus is mysterious. It survived theft by vandalism all these years, only to be destroyed by fire like this.”
The Malawi-bound bus, a Volvo make, developed a fault in 2019 and efforts to fix it were unsuccessful.
The passengers, who were travelling from South Africa, camped by the roadside for days in anticipation that the bus would be fixed and they would continue with their journey, but their hopes were in vain.
They made it to Malawi in batches using alternative transport, including haulage trucks.
Early this year, scrap scavengers tried to tow the bus, but failed, with villagers saying the owner, said to be a Malawi national, told them that the bus would not go anywhere.
Today, the cause of the fire which destroyed the bus is yet to be ascertained.
“We are in shock. There was no one around it when the fire started. The fire just broke out.
“Moreover, the fire was concentrated on the bus. It could have spread along the road given that there is dry grass around,” another villager Phebion Mutsaka said.
When NewsDay Weekender visited the scene recently, welders believed to be from Harare swarmed on the remains, cutting steel possibly for resale.
A Nissan UD truck was stationed at the scene to ferry the remains of Mutoko’s mysterious bus somewhere.
“We are just workers,” said one of the six welders harvesting scrap.
“We were told by our contractors to harvest scrap after the bus was destroyed by fire. That is all.”
The contractors, seated in a black Honda Fit, a distance from the bus, refused to entertain the media.
Villagers could only agonisingly watch the welders further reducing the bus frame into a heap of steel.
“Our bus has gone, it is sad,” Mutsaka lamented.
Today, villagers in Mutoko will live to tell the story of the mysterious bus that lived among them for five years only to be reduced to a shell in a mysterious inferno.
