WHEN Nyaradzai Sachidza (52) and her family moved to remote Gache-Gache fishing camp on the shores of Lake Kariba in 2018, they thought they had found their own piece of heaven.
But the next six years proved nothing but hell, as the family lost two breadwinners to the jaws of wild animals, while the living are fast being driven to the edge of sanity by mysterious events they are encountering.
It all began, innocently enough, with the unexpected death of Sachidza’s husband, Innocent, whose private parts were devoured by a giant crocodile on the banks of Lake Kariba.
Stranger than fiction, as it may sound, the body of Nyaradzai’s husband was left intact despite the horrible attack and it still remains a mystery how that was even possible.
Why would the monster only target the manhood and live the entire body intact, which earned the crocodile the nickname, Macheni — in respectable reference to manhood, after it went on to kill more than 25 other fishermen in Gache-Gache by again curiously targeting their private parts.
Early this year, NewsDay Weekender profiled the infamous reptile in an article, unbeknown that the tale of the Sachidza family was an unfolding live horror epic that would be revisited again.
In the Macheni story it was mentioned in passing that Sachidza nearly lost her five-year-old son after a baboon viciously smacked the boy’s back before disappearing into the bush. The boy was hospitalised for weeks as the wounds took time to heal.
The story also mentioned that last year Sachidza lost his father-in-law in a stomach-churning incident that she is yet to accept up to this day after a hippopotamus hit the dingy he was in, tearing the old man into pieces.
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Months later, disaster has struck again.
Last week, Sachidza went to the lake shore to buy fish and as she returned, she met a strange creature, which, according to her account, resembled a crocodile and a fish.
She screamed her lungs out for help from nearby fishermen when the strange-looking monster tried to attack her.
“I knew something was going to happen,” she told NewsDay Weekender when it revisited her home.
“It felt like something was watching me the whole time and that feeling is even more frightening than seeing things.
“But, I was not hallucinating, I actually saw it.”
When she later arrived home, Sachidza’s two children said they had seen a strange lizard in the dark corner of the family kitchen while they were playing.
When the lizard stared at them they felt scared and ran out of the kitchen.
Local traditional leader, Harrison Nyamufukudza, affectionately known in the area as Sekuru Nzou, said the Sachidza family needs to conduct a cleansing ceremony for them to be spared from the wrath of the supernatural world.
“The family has been at the mercy of wild animals and it seems the attacks will not stop anytime soon. They need to consult and perform the necessary rituals to avoid further deaths,” he said.
For Sachidza, the trauma of living with the reality of how her husband and father-in-law died keeps haunting her. The scars on her son’s back from the baboon attack, worsen her trauma.
Today, she remains haunted day and night by the strange-looking apparition she saw on her way from buying fish.
She hopes that one day things will return to normal and allow her to enjoy life like any other person.
