She descended the stairs painfully, basin and bag on her head, baby on her bosom.
I asked if I could help.
She said "yes" and handed me the heavy baggage.
She told me she was leaving the hospital after being admitted for a week. That she had been discharged earlier in the day.
She wanted directions to the stage where she board a taxi to Gayaza.
She had called her husband about six hours earlier (it was now 5pm) and she was tired of waiting.
I told her she would not make it to the stage in her condition. Freshly C-sectioned, lugging a heavy bag and basin, and her baby.
Could we call her husband perhaps.
No, because her phone had blacked out.
"You can use mine," I offered.
So she did. And smiled as she talked to him. He said he was a few minutes away.
I offered to wait with her.
Her baby boy was swaddled loosely in a cheap blue blanket. It did not look like a baby. She had covered its face completely.
I told her to allow him to breathe. Cover his head, yes, but allow him to breathe.
So we sat at the benches on Floor 2 and waited.
Mulago hospital. The place where, when all else fails, you are referred. No medicine, rude nurses, rotten rusty beds. New mothers lying in the chilly corridors, minutes after a cruel experience in the delivery room. Bloodied, swollen faces look up to you in the Casualty ward. Boda boda accidents mostly. Broken and twisted limbs. Police patrol cars racing in and out of the gates. The lift also badly needs treatment. It is so old and creaky. The floor paneling is worn out, and the wood is showing. You almost have the feeling that you will fall right through.
After about 20 minutes on the hard benches, I dial her husband's number again. He tells me, his voice sounding very out breath, that he had left the hospital because he had searched in vain for her. But he would be ten minutes.
She is staring into space.
After about 10-15 minutes, I call him again. "I'm just round the corner, I'll be with you any time now."
I stand up, ready to see who he is. Actually, I have made up my mind that he must be pretty irresponsible.
Five minutes turn into 10, then 20.
I'm frustrated, but keep my cool. I tell her that I will help her get home. It's very windy and not good for the baby.
She gets up, baby in hand. I grab the bag and basin and we started walking. That's when she tells me how much of a bum her husband is.
I am beginning to doubt this word "husband" which women these days just love throwing around. He is your "hubby" because you are shacking up with him. Girl, he ain't nobody hubban!!
"I tell you madam, I have really suffered in this hospital," she starts. "I came here on Tuesday, was operated upon and my baby was taken to emergency because he was breathing badly. I couldn't even walk to check on him because I was so weak and in pain. I have not been eating, because he left me no money, and yet he told the nurses on the first day, that he had left me enough and would check on me. He has never come."
I notice she is kind of limping. The strap of her plastic sandals is cut. "I asked him to bring me a pair of shoes but he refused, saying I don't need them. I tell you madam, I have really had it. But I just wish I could get home, then everything will be okay."
My heart went out to her. She didn't look a day over 22, and here she is telling stories like she has lived to be over 50.
We get to the bodaboda guy. I give him a lecture about her delicate situation, and that he should transport her and the baby safely. I pay him 2,000 shillings, give her another 5,000, and wave her good bye.
Showing posts with label women issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women issues. Show all posts
Tuesday, 17 April 2018
Tuesday, 5 September 2017
#violaandthedrugs
She rubs her arms vigorously in an attempt to stave off the
uncomfortable shiver. Her mouth is dry, the corners of her lips have
wounds, caked with blood. She keeps looking around her nervously, like
she is scared of something.
She doesn't wear a bra, and her breasts hang low. Her purple blouse falls off her shoulder.
After watching her for about a minute, I walk over,
introduce myself and hold out my hand.
She doesn't take it but looks at me suspiciously, kind of like, “back off!” "You asked to see me. I'm here."
I sit down and she instinctively folds her left leg under her. Her toes are dusty but the soles of her feet look soft. Her brown African leather and beaded sandals are grubby.
When she starts to speak, the smell of smoke on her breath is unmistakable. The first thing she says, more like a whisper, “ I need a fix real quick, otherwise I will burst, nja kwabika.”
Viola is 23, a mother of one - a three-year old girl. She started taking drugs four years ago when she met her boyfriend who is currently in jail for house-breaking. Her first shot was cocaine.
She shows me the black burn-like mark on her inner left wrist. “That is where I inject the drug, okwekuba empiso.”
There many small scars all over her hands, and a badly-done tattoo with the initials V N. Her nails are dirty, bitten down to the quick.
She says she dashed out of the house like a madwoman and now her head hurts and her joints are on fire.
Viola is hooked on crack. From what I know, I conclude it must be that, because she talks about using “file”, which I take to mean “foil”.
She calls it kayinja, a stone. (I recount seeing a story on TV where a woman was arrested for drugs in Kisenyi, and she nearly passed out in the police cell where she was held for hours. The policeman, scared by what he had witnessed (her spasming and screaming uncontrollably) let her out, and she fumbled as she took out the paraphernalia that she had smuggled in her panties- matchbox, foil and all. And in full view of the cameras, proceeded to light, and snort the dose through a tooter.)
Until three days ago, Viola was employed as a maid in a clinic in Kisenyi, in downtown Kampala. She has come here to rat on her former employers who called her a thief.
“That clinic is a drug den, not a place where they treat sick people. It is one of the three major drug dens there. One that is frequented by all and sundry, rich and poor. It is run by a woman posing as a nurse during the day."
Viola knows where the drugs are hidden. In a hole in the floor in the back room, the one where they pretend they are doing tests and administering medicine from. They place a basin on top of the hole and then push a bed over it, so you cannot know.
She continues, “That woman pays me in drugs, not money and yet she handles millions of shillings every day. I told her I need money to help my mother who is looking after my toddler daughter. Do you know that that woman made me wipe dirty floors? And then she made me cook and refused me to give me food, except once, when she threw me some leftovers."
Now she is getting edgy, and I suspect it is the reason she is looking all around her like she is scared of something.
“The drugs are wearing off. I had injected earlier today, at about 6:30am. I lied to my mother that I was sick and I wanted to go to Naguru hospital. She gave me 3,000 shillings. I walked all the way to Kisenyi, where I got someone to share the 5,000 shillings cost for a shot. 2,500 shillings each.
I ask if she has considered rehab.
“I went there once, actually, in February. But I escaped after two weeks. I went there when I felt I had had enough but they committed me to the mental cases’ ward. Can you imagine?
Viola hesitates before going on, like she’s trying to recall something. Then her eyes tear as she recounts how a mental patient attacked her and pulled her blanket off the bed as she took an afternoon nap.
“That ‘takkey” (cold turkey) phase was without doubt, the worst experience of my life. I had no appetite, I had diarrhea for four days, a migraine and I there were things that attacked me all the time. And when I couldn't take it anymore, I just fled.”
She says someone told her mother about her spell in the mental institution. But she doesn’t know who.
“But she believes that I am now clean, and when I say I am sick, she thinks I have malaria.”
Then she goes quiet as she stares at the two women sitting opposite us.
“I once looked really good. Nga mbakuba! I will bring you my pictures. Ah!”
Her hand goes up to her shabby coils as she describes how long her dreadlocks were, about how healthy her body was, and how the skin on her face glowed with beauty. That is only a memory now.
She cannot stand her friends seeing her like this, the ones who knew her four years ago, before she hooked up with the addicts. She is ashamed of where life has taken her, she is embarrassed that the whole village calls her the druggie. So when she spots them, and she is good at seeing them first before they see her, she dives into the shortcuts. But of late, she has resorted to hiding under a veil, or walking in the night because then, she doesn't have to look at the ground as she walks, and no one will see her.
What about marijuana, I am curious to know.
Enjaga, she calls it, gives her thoughts about death. Like she starts seeing herself dead.
Suicidal thoughts? Yes, and it also makes her depressed, she hears voices and sees things chase her and she wants to die. Like when she was in rehab. “Terrible, terrible!”
Because her mother is so poor and cannot afford a bed for Viola, she sleeps on a bench in the tiny house. “Anyway, I cannot even lie down comfortably on a bed because it makes my body hurt and I fidget all night. On the nights when I have a good sleep, is when I have has taken a shot and four sleeping pills.”
There are instances when Viola will disappear from home for weeks on end and her mother has no idea where she is. She says a force takes over her mind and her body and leads her out. Like it is holding her hand and pulling her away to search for her next fix.
“So what do you tell your mother when you suddenly show up again?”
“Hmm… nothing. She doesn’t even ask.”
But now she wants to reform. She is tired, her body and mind are suffering.
She is scared of the pain of a body without a fix.
She is tired of worrying about where she will get money to buy more drugs, and wondering if she will continue selling her body or stealing.
“And if you do get the chance to reform, what next for you?”
“Njagala bizinensi y'okutunda a’manda. Selling charcoal. I plan to relocate to Munyonyo or … (she is thinking), I could go to the islands- ebizinga- and get away from it all. But I have a huge problem with water, I get a bad feeling like I am drowning.”
I get the opportunity to ask the one question I have been wanting to ask. Where did it all start?
She takes me past that- before she met the drug-pusher who misled her. She had left school when she was about 14. But she quickly learnt her mother’s trade. Her mother sold raw matooke and charcoal. Viola had struck out on her own when she was about 18, and went to live in Nansana. She had even taken out a loan to start business and pay rent. Her mind wanders off and she doesn't finish that story. And I don’t push for more information. I just let her talk and talk.
Her father died when she was young- she doesn’t remember what age- but she has older and younger siblings. Her older siblings, in her words,” do not want to know” about her situation. That they all have their own problems to deal with.
Something else she learned was to insert a cannula in her hand to administer an intravenous infusion- saline water - which gives her a lot of relief. She mastered the art when she worked at the clinic, sometimes attending to patients. She laughs, “It is even cheaper than the cocaine. Cannula, 500 shillings. Saline water, 1,500 shillings."
Viola is in a place where the mental ignores the physical, and then sometimes the physical ignores the mental and at other times they conspire against her. She is confused.
“Madam, do you know why there are so many petty thieves in town, the type that snatch phones and handbags? They have to feed their drug habit. They take your gadget worth 500,000 shillings and sell it for 10,000 shillings. That’s how much the needle has taken over their lives and become their demanding boss, and they, its slave.”
She is a slave under the yoke, knowing what harm her body and mind are being subjected to but she must get high.
Now she is peeing and pooing blood and she is scared. She doesn't like it but she doesn't know how to stop it, and again, her eyes well up. There’s so much anguish in her glazed eyes.
We have now talked for more than an hour and I say I have to get back to an assignment. I tell her that the road to recovery starts with her and if she’s ready to walk the journey, then I will help her.
She looks into the distance, I don’t know if it is that she’s not convinced, or she doesn't know where to start.
For her, life is not about five years in the future, it is about how soon she can get something into her bloodstream.
Then she asks for fare to get her back home. I look straight in her eyes. She hesitates a bit, then laughs.
We both know what the money is for. As I walk through the corridor to my desk, I wrestle with my thoughts about feeding her habit. I think of her little girl, I think of her mother, I think about her body and her bony shoulders.
I put some money in an envelope and take it to her.
"Save some for your little girl."
She doesn't wear a bra, and her breasts hang low. Her purple blouse falls off her shoulder.
After watching her for about a minute, I walk over,
introduce myself and hold out my hand.
She doesn't take it but looks at me suspiciously, kind of like, “back off!” "You asked to see me. I'm here."
I sit down and she instinctively folds her left leg under her. Her toes are dusty but the soles of her feet look soft. Her brown African leather and beaded sandals are grubby.
When she starts to speak, the smell of smoke on her breath is unmistakable. The first thing she says, more like a whisper, “ I need a fix real quick, otherwise I will burst, nja kwabika.”
Viola is 23, a mother of one - a three-year old girl. She started taking drugs four years ago when she met her boyfriend who is currently in jail for house-breaking. Her first shot was cocaine.
She shows me the black burn-like mark on her inner left wrist. “That is where I inject the drug, okwekuba empiso.”
There many small scars all over her hands, and a badly-done tattoo with the initials V N. Her nails are dirty, bitten down to the quick.
She says she dashed out of the house like a madwoman and now her head hurts and her joints are on fire.
Viola is hooked on crack. From what I know, I conclude it must be that, because she talks about using “file”, which I take to mean “foil”.
She calls it kayinja, a stone. (I recount seeing a story on TV where a woman was arrested for drugs in Kisenyi, and she nearly passed out in the police cell where she was held for hours. The policeman, scared by what he had witnessed (her spasming and screaming uncontrollably) let her out, and she fumbled as she took out the paraphernalia that she had smuggled in her panties- matchbox, foil and all. And in full view of the cameras, proceeded to light, and snort the dose through a tooter.)
Until three days ago, Viola was employed as a maid in a clinic in Kisenyi, in downtown Kampala. She has come here to rat on her former employers who called her a thief.
“That clinic is a drug den, not a place where they treat sick people. It is one of the three major drug dens there. One that is frequented by all and sundry, rich and poor. It is run by a woman posing as a nurse during the day."
Viola knows where the drugs are hidden. In a hole in the floor in the back room, the one where they pretend they are doing tests and administering medicine from. They place a basin on top of the hole and then push a bed over it, so you cannot know.
She continues, “That woman pays me in drugs, not money and yet she handles millions of shillings every day. I told her I need money to help my mother who is looking after my toddler daughter. Do you know that that woman made me wipe dirty floors? And then she made me cook and refused me to give me food, except once, when she threw me some leftovers."
Now she is getting edgy, and I suspect it is the reason she is looking all around her like she is scared of something.
“The drugs are wearing off. I had injected earlier today, at about 6:30am. I lied to my mother that I was sick and I wanted to go to Naguru hospital. She gave me 3,000 shillings. I walked all the way to Kisenyi, where I got someone to share the 5,000 shillings cost for a shot. 2,500 shillings each.
I ask if she has considered rehab.
“I went there once, actually, in February. But I escaped after two weeks. I went there when I felt I had had enough but they committed me to the mental cases’ ward. Can you imagine?
Viola hesitates before going on, like she’s trying to recall something. Then her eyes tear as she recounts how a mental patient attacked her and pulled her blanket off the bed as she took an afternoon nap.
“That ‘takkey” (cold turkey) phase was without doubt, the worst experience of my life. I had no appetite, I had diarrhea for four days, a migraine and I there were things that attacked me all the time. And when I couldn't take it anymore, I just fled.”
She says someone told her mother about her spell in the mental institution. But she doesn’t know who.
“But she believes that I am now clean, and when I say I am sick, she thinks I have malaria.”
Then she goes quiet as she stares at the two women sitting opposite us.
“I once looked really good. Nga mbakuba! I will bring you my pictures. Ah!”
Her hand goes up to her shabby coils as she describes how long her dreadlocks were, about how healthy her body was, and how the skin on her face glowed with beauty. That is only a memory now.
She cannot stand her friends seeing her like this, the ones who knew her four years ago, before she hooked up with the addicts. She is ashamed of where life has taken her, she is embarrassed that the whole village calls her the druggie. So when she spots them, and she is good at seeing them first before they see her, she dives into the shortcuts. But of late, she has resorted to hiding under a veil, or walking in the night because then, she doesn't have to look at the ground as she walks, and no one will see her.
What about marijuana, I am curious to know.
Enjaga, she calls it, gives her thoughts about death. Like she starts seeing herself dead.
Suicidal thoughts? Yes, and it also makes her depressed, she hears voices and sees things chase her and she wants to die. Like when she was in rehab. “Terrible, terrible!”
Because her mother is so poor and cannot afford a bed for Viola, she sleeps on a bench in the tiny house. “Anyway, I cannot even lie down comfortably on a bed because it makes my body hurt and I fidget all night. On the nights when I have a good sleep, is when I have has taken a shot and four sleeping pills.”
There are instances when Viola will disappear from home for weeks on end and her mother has no idea where she is. She says a force takes over her mind and her body and leads her out. Like it is holding her hand and pulling her away to search for her next fix.
“So what do you tell your mother when you suddenly show up again?”
“Hmm… nothing. She doesn’t even ask.”
But now she wants to reform. She is tired, her body and mind are suffering.
She is scared of the pain of a body without a fix.
She is tired of worrying about where she will get money to buy more drugs, and wondering if she will continue selling her body or stealing.
“And if you do get the chance to reform, what next for you?”
“Njagala bizinensi y'okutunda a’manda. Selling charcoal. I plan to relocate to Munyonyo or … (she is thinking), I could go to the islands- ebizinga- and get away from it all. But I have a huge problem with water, I get a bad feeling like I am drowning.”
I get the opportunity to ask the one question I have been wanting to ask. Where did it all start?
She takes me past that- before she met the drug-pusher who misled her. She had left school when she was about 14. But she quickly learnt her mother’s trade. Her mother sold raw matooke and charcoal. Viola had struck out on her own when she was about 18, and went to live in Nansana. She had even taken out a loan to start business and pay rent. Her mind wanders off and she doesn't finish that story. And I don’t push for more information. I just let her talk and talk.
Her father died when she was young- she doesn’t remember what age- but she has older and younger siblings. Her older siblings, in her words,” do not want to know” about her situation. That they all have their own problems to deal with.
Something else she learned was to insert a cannula in her hand to administer an intravenous infusion- saline water - which gives her a lot of relief. She mastered the art when she worked at the clinic, sometimes attending to patients. She laughs, “It is even cheaper than the cocaine. Cannula, 500 shillings. Saline water, 1,500 shillings."
Viola is in a place where the mental ignores the physical, and then sometimes the physical ignores the mental and at other times they conspire against her. She is confused.
“Madam, do you know why there are so many petty thieves in town, the type that snatch phones and handbags? They have to feed their drug habit. They take your gadget worth 500,000 shillings and sell it for 10,000 shillings. That’s how much the needle has taken over their lives and become their demanding boss, and they, its slave.”
She is a slave under the yoke, knowing what harm her body and mind are being subjected to but she must get high.
Now she is peeing and pooing blood and she is scared. She doesn't like it but she doesn't know how to stop it, and again, her eyes well up. There’s so much anguish in her glazed eyes.
We have now talked for more than an hour and I say I have to get back to an assignment. I tell her that the road to recovery starts with her and if she’s ready to walk the journey, then I will help her.
She looks into the distance, I don’t know if it is that she’s not convinced, or she doesn't know where to start.
For her, life is not about five years in the future, it is about how soon she can get something into her bloodstream.
Then she asks for fare to get her back home. I look straight in her eyes. She hesitates a bit, then laughs.
We both know what the money is for. As I walk through the corridor to my desk, I wrestle with my thoughts about feeding her habit. I think of her little girl, I think of her mother, I think about her body and her bony shoulders.
I put some money in an envelope and take it to her.
"Save some for your little girl."
#ofwitchcraft
The first I saw of her, she was running. Very fast, towards us. With a baby. And she was crying, her face stained with tears and mucous that threatened to slide into her mouth. But she had another mission. I looked at her as she passed us. She looked devastated. “Nyabo, kiki? Omwana abadde ki?” The sight of her and the baby took me back 22 years ago when I desperately ran to Mulago hospital with my son who was seriously ill.
“Wuiii! Wuiiii!” She cried harder. “Si mwana! Nina ebizibu, omwami wange ayagala kututta!” That her husband or boyfriend, or lover, wanted to kill them.
I quickly abandoned the visitor I was chatting with, and said my hurried goodbyes.
Her baby couldn't have been older than a week. I suspect that his umbilical cord was still attached. He was wrapped carelessly in a multicolored checkered blankie. I offered her a chair and she sat down heavily.
“Kiki?”
She repeated the statement about her husband. “He wants us dead. My sister and the children are hiding in a lodge in Kamwokya, that’s where we spent the night. I have no idea how they are but when my sister called me about ten minutes ago, she said that my first-born daughter was having a seizure and foaming at the mouth! That was what happened to my other son yesterday, before we fled the home in Nansana! You have to help me! I want to go on the TV and tell my story! That man is wicked! He must be stopped before he kills all of us! Help me please before we all die!! She leaped up as she shouted the last two sentences, making as if to enter the building.
I was kind of lost. Her story had a torso but no head, legs and hands. “Nyabo, sooka otuule wansi onnyumize story yo nga ogiva ku ntobo.” I needed details. But just then the baby started wailing.
“Feed her,” I implored.
“Nedda, kano kalenzi! (She was informing me that the child was male, not female) Omusajja agenda kututta! Omusajja atumalawo!!”
She started shaking the baby. Vigorously. Willing him to shut his mouth.
“Nze gwolaba nze, ndi nakawere wa weeksi emu n’ekitundu!” Baby was only one and a half weeks old. “My husband has accused me of bewitching him and his relatives! Can you believe he accused me of taking my children to a witch doctor!”
“When did this start? By the way, what is your name?”
“I am called Fiona Madinah. Trouble started about five years ago, when my husband brought some majiini home. I tell you, the things I have seen!”
She paused and breathed heavily.
“What did you see? What happened?”
“So many things had been happening, we couldn't sleep at night because there were voices that spoke in the dark, sometimes you’d feel something touching your head and when you woke up, there was nothing. Other times, there was the stench of rotting flesh in out bedroom but I was the only one who could smell it! But that day, what I saw made me really believe that my husband is an evil person!”
I waited, willing her to get to the “shocking” point.
“One evening, about three weeks ago, I had not even given birth yet, I was in the kitchen when I heard him approaching. I came out and went behind the kitchen. You know, our kitchen is outside. When he came back, he didn't enter the house. He went to the compound, just outside our front door. Then he knelt down and dug a small hole with a stick. Then he put something inside that hole. He had come with a sheep on a rope and tied it to a tree somewhere near the path leading to the banana plantation. Then he went and untied that sheep. Suddenly, the animal started talking… In a man’s voice!”
“What was it saying?” It’s kind of scary but I have my doubts.
“It was speaking in a man’s voice! You couldn't hear what it was saying, but it had a deep voice, not ‘maaaaing’ like a sheep, it was a man’s voice! I was so scared! That night I took the children out of the house and we slept outside!”
“Are you a Christian?”
I could tell that that question threw her off balance.
“Eh? Yes, you see, I was a Christian before I got married to this man, but he made me become a Muslim when he got a second wife. That woman is the one bringing this zahama to our home, and yet me I decided that I was not going to cook with another woman so I went to the witch doctor so that he could leave her!”
“So you ALSO went to the witch doctor?”
She takes some time to answer the question and looks on the floor, making patterns with her foot.
“Yes, what did he expect me to do? I had to go and get something to make him love me again!”
“It seems there’s a lot of ‘going to the witch doctor” in your home?”
“Yes! What do you expect me to do?”
She was getting really worked up and shaking the baby so hard, I feared for its health. It wailed harder.
“Feed the child nyabo!”
“I don’t have breast milk! We haven't eaten since yester…”
Just then, her phone rings. It’s a Techno with a loud, very weird ringtone.
“Wanji!” She yells. “Ndi wano, agenda k’unteeka kumpewo! Baleeta camera!”
I am aghast. Nobody has promised to put her on air. And nobody has promised to bring a camera to film her.
She talks some more with her sister as I stand up and stretch. When she is done, I tell her we need to get the baby out of the cold.
“That was my sister,” she said. “The lodge owner has ordered them out! Kyokka they have not eaten since yesterday!”
“How much do you owe him?”
“30,000 shillings. But we haven’t eaten since yesterday and the children are so hungry!”
“And how is your daughter? The one with the seizures?”
“My sister says she has recovered!”
To be honest, I didn't know what to do for her. I realized I was trying to hold on as long as I could find a solution.
As luck would have it, a work colleague sauntered by. “What’s the matter? Why is the woman crying?”
I narrated what the woman had told me, but it was as disjointed and full of gaps as I could understand it. My colleague sat down opposite the mother and asked more questions. She said she needed to get to the bottom of the problem. I walked away and back to my desk for a few minutes. It was getting dark and I worried what would be of this woman and her children.
When I returned to the reception a few minutes later, my colleague was dialing the Police. She said that after getting the “whole” story, and if there was a threat to life involved, the Police was best placed to deal with it.
The Police Spokesperson for Kampala Metropolitan Emilian Kayima offered to help and called back within a few minutes. He said that the Police in Nansana would be sending a car to pick up the lady, and then go to Kamwokya and pick the kids and their aunt. Soon enough, the Police truck arrived and we handed the mother over to a Policewoman who said she was from the family department.
“Wuiii! Wuiiii!” She cried harder. “Si mwana! Nina ebizibu, omwami wange ayagala kututta!” That her husband or boyfriend, or lover, wanted to kill them.
I quickly abandoned the visitor I was chatting with, and said my hurried goodbyes.
Her baby couldn't have been older than a week. I suspect that his umbilical cord was still attached. He was wrapped carelessly in a multicolored checkered blankie. I offered her a chair and she sat down heavily.
“Kiki?”
She repeated the statement about her husband. “He wants us dead. My sister and the children are hiding in a lodge in Kamwokya, that’s where we spent the night. I have no idea how they are but when my sister called me about ten minutes ago, she said that my first-born daughter was having a seizure and foaming at the mouth! That was what happened to my other son yesterday, before we fled the home in Nansana! You have to help me! I want to go on the TV and tell my story! That man is wicked! He must be stopped before he kills all of us! Help me please before we all die!! She leaped up as she shouted the last two sentences, making as if to enter the building.
I was kind of lost. Her story had a torso but no head, legs and hands. “Nyabo, sooka otuule wansi onnyumize story yo nga ogiva ku ntobo.” I needed details. But just then the baby started wailing.
“Feed her,” I implored.
“Nedda, kano kalenzi! (She was informing me that the child was male, not female) Omusajja agenda kututta! Omusajja atumalawo!!”
She started shaking the baby. Vigorously. Willing him to shut his mouth.
“Nze gwolaba nze, ndi nakawere wa weeksi emu n’ekitundu!” Baby was only one and a half weeks old. “My husband has accused me of bewitching him and his relatives! Can you believe he accused me of taking my children to a witch doctor!”
“When did this start? By the way, what is your name?”
“I am called Fiona Madinah. Trouble started about five years ago, when my husband brought some majiini home. I tell you, the things I have seen!”
She paused and breathed heavily.
“What did you see? What happened?”
“So many things had been happening, we couldn't sleep at night because there were voices that spoke in the dark, sometimes you’d feel something touching your head and when you woke up, there was nothing. Other times, there was the stench of rotting flesh in out bedroom but I was the only one who could smell it! But that day, what I saw made me really believe that my husband is an evil person!”
I waited, willing her to get to the “shocking” point.
“One evening, about three weeks ago, I had not even given birth yet, I was in the kitchen when I heard him approaching. I came out and went behind the kitchen. You know, our kitchen is outside. When he came back, he didn't enter the house. He went to the compound, just outside our front door. Then he knelt down and dug a small hole with a stick. Then he put something inside that hole. He had come with a sheep on a rope and tied it to a tree somewhere near the path leading to the banana plantation. Then he went and untied that sheep. Suddenly, the animal started talking… In a man’s voice!”
“What was it saying?” It’s kind of scary but I have my doubts.
“It was speaking in a man’s voice! You couldn't hear what it was saying, but it had a deep voice, not ‘maaaaing’ like a sheep, it was a man’s voice! I was so scared! That night I took the children out of the house and we slept outside!”
“Are you a Christian?”
I could tell that that question threw her off balance.
“Eh? Yes, you see, I was a Christian before I got married to this man, but he made me become a Muslim when he got a second wife. That woman is the one bringing this zahama to our home, and yet me I decided that I was not going to cook with another woman so I went to the witch doctor so that he could leave her!”
“So you ALSO went to the witch doctor?”
She takes some time to answer the question and looks on the floor, making patterns with her foot.
“Yes, what did he expect me to do? I had to go and get something to make him love me again!”
“It seems there’s a lot of ‘going to the witch doctor” in your home?”
“Yes! What do you expect me to do?”
She was getting really worked up and shaking the baby so hard, I feared for its health. It wailed harder.
“Feed the child nyabo!”
“I don’t have breast milk! We haven't eaten since yester…”
Just then, her phone rings. It’s a Techno with a loud, very weird ringtone.
“Wanji!” She yells. “Ndi wano, agenda k’unteeka kumpewo! Baleeta camera!”
I am aghast. Nobody has promised to put her on air. And nobody has promised to bring a camera to film her.
She talks some more with her sister as I stand up and stretch. When she is done, I tell her we need to get the baby out of the cold.
“That was my sister,” she said. “The lodge owner has ordered them out! Kyokka they have not eaten since yesterday!”
“How much do you owe him?”
“30,000 shillings. But we haven’t eaten since yesterday and the children are so hungry!”
“And how is your daughter? The one with the seizures?”
“My sister says she has recovered!”
To be honest, I didn't know what to do for her. I realized I was trying to hold on as long as I could find a solution.
As luck would have it, a work colleague sauntered by. “What’s the matter? Why is the woman crying?”
I narrated what the woman had told me, but it was as disjointed and full of gaps as I could understand it. My colleague sat down opposite the mother and asked more questions. She said she needed to get to the bottom of the problem. I walked away and back to my desk for a few minutes. It was getting dark and I worried what would be of this woman and her children.
When I returned to the reception a few minutes later, my colleague was dialing the Police. She said that after getting the “whole” story, and if there was a threat to life involved, the Police was best placed to deal with it.
The Police Spokesperson for Kampala Metropolitan Emilian Kayima offered to help and called back within a few minutes. He said that the Police in Nansana would be sending a car to pick up the lady, and then go to Kamwokya and pick the kids and their aunt. Soon enough, the Police truck arrived and we handed the mother over to a Policewoman who said she was from the family department.
Tuesday, 16 May 2017
#howmanyeh?
| The Good Ol' Doc's table (courtesy Internet) |
This woman, a 34 -year old had a fever and decides not to self-medicate. And because she is one of these ‘corporate’ ladies, she has a medical insurance policy and will take full advantage of it.
So, off she goes to a hospital, a short distance from the office where she works. After the regular heart-rate, pressure, weight readings, she was ushered in to see the doctor. The elderly man did not look up and continued writing even as she walked in, said “Good afternoon”, and carefully sat down on a chair opposite him.
After two long minutes of illegible scribbling, the Doctor shifted his attention to her. She took this as a signal to launch into her ailments. “I have a slight fever, a pounding headache, dry lips, runny tum…”
“Stop there!”
He returned to his scribbling.
After a minute, he looked up again.
“How many children do you have?”
“Eh?”
“I asked you how many children you have. Olina abaana bameka?” It came out rather crudely.
“I have no children.”
“You have no children, eh? At your age? You are 34 years old, 34! You should have started having children when you were 24! You are a whole ten years late. What is wrong with these young women of these days, why don’t you want to have children? You think you can be young forever? You think your breasts will stay upright even when you are 70 and sitting at home all alone? Don’t you want the joy of grandchildren? Really, you really baffle me. Wanting to young forever!”
And the tirade went on and on, saliva jumping onto the sheet of paper he had been scribbling on , as she sat there looking and listening to him because of her not having children. He had not even bothered to ask the reason she was in the room.
After watching him come close to foaming at the mouth for about five minutes, she stood up. “Excuse me please.”
“No, sit down! So what is the matter with you? Now, explain your illness. What brought you here?”
“No thank you Doctor. I will go elsewhere. Actually, come to think of it, I feel much better now!”
And with that, she swished out of the room and out of the clinic to a drug shop.
**************************
Self-medication suddenly sounded so much better.
Friday, 21 April 2017
#babyinherwomb
He had suffered a bout of malaria when he was just three months. He recovered after three days. But he started crying continuously, even when he had been fed and cleaned. He did not sit at four months, which meant he could not crawl or walk. The nurses at the immunization center said his growth was regressing, and he soon became underweight. She desperately sought medication as his limbs wasted away. The illness meant that she had to abandon her job as a security guard. It also took a huge toll on her salary, which all went into buying medicine for her child, who was not getting any better.
She had met the father of her child at work. He was also a security guard. She worked during the day, he did the night shift. One night, three months ago, the shop he was guarding was broken into, and the thieves made off with money and valuables. The owner of the shop, an Indian, demanded for justice. Her “husband” was arrested and thrown behind bars. He has not been to court, but is being held in prison. She visits him every Monday, and has to take him some money for cigarettes and something to eat.
When she came to the office the first time, about three weeks ago, she wanted money to either buy a special chair for her son, or to travel home to the village. The chair cost 350,000 shillings. The administrators of the Katalemwa Cheshire Home for Rehabilitation Services in Mpererwe, which says it “brings smiles to the faces of children with disabilities’, said her bill had become astronomical and she had to pay them some money otherwise…. (She claimed that some parents leave their children under the care of the nurses who are impatient and beat them regularly.)
She didn't have any money, but opted to go to her mother in Gulu district where she said, she would get some help, and love. Tears welled up in her eyes, as she thanked me profusely.
She returned to Kampala on Wednesday, with 300,000 shillings in her bag. That bag was stolen in the taxi that she took to Luzira. Someone picked the bag from the kameeme (that hot engine behind the driver's seat). Her ID, phone and the precious money were all taken. She said a kind pastor allowed her to spend the night in a church in Luzira.
As she narrated her ordeal, her son was testy and cried a lot. She shoved a bottle of passion fruit juice into his little mouth. His teeth have all been ground down by disease. He writhed and wailed loudly, obviously uncomfortable, as his mother bound the kikoyi which she wrapped around his little body tighter.
She wanted money for: one, to be able to take him to the hospital the next day, and two, to feed him because he was hungry, the reason he was crying so much.
She refused to look me in the eyes and sat with her body turned away from me the whole time. I explained that instead of asking around for money, it would be better if she got something to do that would continuously bring in some cash, even if it wasn’t much. She said she wanted to do a charcoal business, and some vegetables like tomatoes and onions on the side. My advice was that whatever happened, she should save some of that income, however small it was. I told her I knew what poverty smelt like, when you have a child that you must feed and do not even know where the next meal will come from. But you must pick yourself up, and carry your tusks as well.
She said some neighbors in the village had gossiped about her child, saying he had been attacked by evil spirits. Some told her mother that they should abandon the child in a bush and concentrate on other things. But she is determined to keep him, however much it takes.
As she prepared herself to leave, she unwrapped the kikoyi. The child was wet with urine. He cannot control his bladder. And she cannot afford diapers or nappies. Maybe she does not have any old cloths with which to pad him. There was a strong smell of urine around her. But she stands up, a worried smile on her face, her look flitting between scared and confident.
The baby in her womb is growing bigger.
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