When commentators anticipated last year, after power started shifting in the country following the murder of a journalist, that buckets of dirt would fly, it sounded like just another figure of speech.
In 2019, it became a reality, one that screamed at people from newspaper headlines, TV news and, mainly, their Facebook feeds.
If 2018 was a year that challenged us in shocking ways, 2019 was one that taught us a lot about this country, perhaps more than most of its inhabitants believed there was to learn.