Joseph Atukunda; The battle with mental health



Joseph Atukunda



By Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa

Mental health in Uganda has for a long time been treated with a lot of suspicion and misunderstanding. In many tribal societies it is treated like a taboo. People with mental illnesses are thought of as mad. They are thought of as being possessed by evil spirits or having been affected by supernatural causes and witchcraft okuloga. While traditional healers have tried to bridge the gap in the providence of some form of treatment, there has also been intervention from religious groups especially evangelical Christians trying to "exorcise" those afflicted by evil.

Therefore people with mental illnesses have been excluded from main stream society for a long time. A report by The International Journal of Mental Health Systems found that mental services in Uganda are underfunded. Only 1% of the total health expenditure is spent on mental health and in many cases, treatment is only centred in urban areas. There is one main national referral hospital, Butabika.

Joseph Atukunda was in his last year at high school in 1989when problems started ”I was outgoing at school as you know, an extrovert but all over a sudden I became withdrawn and fearful, lost interest of the things I liked."  For Joseph this was the beginning of depression buthe had no idea what it was. "After holidays I refused to go back to school and tried to even commit suicide"

Atukunda was known amongst others to be one of the best actors at school. At Budo Junior School and at Kings College Budo, he was known to have such great stage experience especially with comedy. He was a school prefect and he was well respected. Yet everything came crushing down around him. He had to learn that depression made him scared and loose interest in things that he liked. Worst still, it made him feel suicidal for no good reason. "The brain is just having a problem and misinterpreting things [but] many people have taken their lives that way."

"They say that its a chemical imbalance, the psychiatrists but to me it was an identity crisis gone wrong. Most people suffer mental illness onset in the late teens as I did and usually this is the time of identity crisis"

Joseph Kahigiriza Atukunda  was born in 1969 in western Uganda.  His late father, Mzee James Kahigiriza,  was the last prime minister of Ankole. He was born into a large family going to Budo Junior School and Kings College Budo for his education. When he dropped out of Budo before his final exams, he went to Nkumba College of Commerce (Now the University) to study accountancy. Because he hadn't finished his A level, he had to rely on his O level results for admission.

One of his friends at high school Philip Miiro recalls the days at Budo "Atusoks (his nick name for Joseph) used to call me "Partner" and we read hard. When books became hard we used to go to point X to mourn our low marks. But we worked hard". Miiro and Atukunda both studied Physics, Chemistry and Biology. They both dreamt of becoming doctors. "One day, Muddu (a biology teacher) gave each of us  1.5 out of 20 for our biology essays. That was a very low moment in our lives". Miiro was sad to see his friend succumb to mental illness leaving him to struggle on alone through to the end.

To Atukunda, this was a major blow "I could not continue with my studies and go on to University and after surviving the suicide attempt it was understood that I was developing some mental illness and I was treated by Prof. Bosa at mulago with ECT. This is electric shocks through the brain and its believed to help in severe depression when life is at risk of suicide".

When he got better, he went to Mbarara to rest but then got manic depression while trying to act a play and direct it about mental illness. "When I got manic, I was then diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and treated for the mania again at Mulago. Bipolar had bouts of depression followed by mania but also sometime of being normal."

One of the lowest points in his battle against this illness was in 2003 "I had a manic episode and I was taken by the police to Butaibka (national psychiatric hospital). On arrival at the hospital, I was injected, stripped naked and put in a very cold isolation room" Atukuda was so depressed that he started hallucinating he was in hell. The room never had a toilet and on occasion, food was brought before it had been cleaned.  "Apart from isolating you from the rest of the patients as you may be very dangerous, the psychiatrists maintain that it also has some therapeutic effect of cooling you down when manic." In this room, he maintained that even though it was unpleasant it made him come back to his senses   "you are thankful for all that was done to restore you."

When he was first diagnosed, he was taken to traditional healers "I can't really say whether I was helped or not by the traditional healers but some professionals think traditional healers help for those who believe in them. The body is self-healing and Jesus told many people that your faith has healed you. Some people who believe in traditional healers think positively after seeing one and foster wellness to themselves. On the other hand western medications have a lot of side effects and are quite addictive to an extent that when you stay on them very long it becomes a guarantee that you get a relapse the moment you discontinue medication."

"The psychiatrists say we have to remain on medication for life but some books I have read like Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker are really against medication and convince the readers that it seems pharmaceutical companies are out to hook people and somehow convince the psychiatrists to encourage and keep people on medication. Please read this book and see what am talking about. We users are left in a dilemma whether to discontinue medication or not but this is largely an individual choice and like Rev. Bombo (RIP) used to tell us, you can't escape the consequences of your choice."

His family especially his wife have handled his illness with a lot of understanding "They are simply taking it easy" Atukunda now works for heartsounds Uganda mental health service user-led Community-Based Organisation helping other people with mental problems "Now that I have made it a vocation and some of our survival comes from my working in mental health it is much easier on them. My wife runs a catering service and I have given her business on many occasions cooking for our workshops. We have agreed with our donors that we give her business as she works with service users and carers in form of occupational therapy. She gets very frightened and encourages me to go for medication and if I get worse she convinces me to go for admission."

Mental health services are improving he maintains "we service users are coming in openly to talk about the illness things are getting better, stigma is being combated. The service users should be consulted on how they wish to be treated and our experience with the illness put to use."

There are many challenges that still face companies like Heartsounds "We two funded projects running, the donor requirement that administrative costs should not exceed 10 or 15% of the total budget leaves most of our administrative costs not covered as we are beginners and are getting small funding. Our salaries as full time workers are still very low yet some of us already have families to look after, we are failing to pay our utility bills and as we talk our power has been disconnected at our resource centre, we are just lucky that I own the premises where our resource centre is housed otherwise we would also be having a problem of rent."

Joseph Atukunda still battles his mental health but with much more optimism now than ever before. recently, he was in The United Kingdom on a Commonwealth funded trip to further enhance his skills in helping out people like him who have had the misfortune of having mental health problems.

“Nze ndi ku murimo. Bwembeela ku murimo, MBEELA KU MURIMO!”

By Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa

My dear friend Godfrey “Leo” Kivumbi was once carrying out his normal duties as the prep prefect at Kings College Budo one evening. These duties amongst others involved taking the pressure lamps down to girls end whenever there was a power cut so that the girls could have some light in their coommon rooms.

I can’t remember where the lamps were lit from but on many occasions, they were carried across the “Green Lake” (lower field) while alight. So, anyone from any direction could see him well.

Now, the problem was that on the way back,  Leo had to cross the vast expanse that is the Green Lake in the dark. Anyone with good knowledge of this area will realise that if there is a power cut and only the upper classes are lit by the generator, the whole place is wrapped up in almost ink like blackness. 

The Famous Green Lake. Photo by Yosamu Semugoma



For reasons Leo is yet to explain, he decided to cross the field diagonally heading towards Nigeria house instead of going along the normal route, past a set of concrete stairs towards the lower classes. He nearly first came to problems when he missed the goal posts at the girls end side with inches to spare. Thankfully he knew that if he walked through the high jump pit, he would miss the posts. Keep on a certain vector and you are heading straight for Nigeria house senior wing.

Then out of nowhere, an arrow was right in his face!!!! The Askari. That one with an Askari name like “Mulefu” or something. Some dark blue guy one couldn’t see the contours of his face against the Milky way. So, he shouted at Leo stopping him to ask who he was:

“Sumama! We nanni?” Mulefu asked

“Godfrey Kivumbi”, Prep Prefect.

“Onakupenda wapi” Mulefu asked. Kivumbi was flummoxed. Coming from a pretty affluent middle class family, Leo had no idea what Mulefu was asking in Swahili . Problem is that both of them did now not understand each other.

So, with the arrow now straining against the bow, right in between his eyes, Leo thought fast. He decided to reason with Mulefu. Pleading that he was only a student heading back to boys end after his duties.  Mulefu was not having any of it.

“Nze ndi ku murimo” he interjected in a heavy western accent. But Leo pleaded that while that was true, Mulefu was arresting an innocent person.

“Nze ndi ku murimo. Bwembeela ku murimo, MBEELA KU MURIMO!” Mulefu barked. So Leo thought maybe “chai” will do. Quickly Leo asked Mulefu whether his wife would eat that bow and arrow he was aiming at  him on a darkened football pitch or the Shs 300 that Leo was now waving in his face. Mulfeu relented and took the money. Needless to say, that money bought Leo another three weeks of free passage to girls end anytime even when he wasn’t on duty.

Until the next time…….”SUMAMA! WE NANI??”

Leo new what to do next time.........

Confessions Of The Budonian Dumb Ass.


By Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa
 


Kings College Budo Upper Classes. Photo by Yosamu Semugoma

There comes a seminal moment in one’s life where they start questioning a certain trait about themselves or actually confirm that there are somethings in life that they can or cannot do. I knew that age was catching up with me when I stopped somersaulting on the spot. But with academics, it was a hot Monday morning in 1981 at Budo Junior School when I was excluded from both P3 West (Eyabagezi) and P3 East (eyabasilu). I spent the rest of the morning sat behind the school kitchen not knowing what next. How low can that get?!?Then there was the time when Ms Kigozi wrote the heading; The Mole Concept on the blackboard. We were in the chemistry laboratory at Kings College Budo (1987). That was the time I stopped understanding Chemistry.

At Budo , I knew that whenever results were displayed on the noticeboard, I started off by looking at the bottom of the list for my name. Even then, I never thought of myself as a dunce because regardless of my position in class, I still held my position socially with clever people like the Songas, Paul Yawe and Peter Sengeri.

As a student, the fright of report signing was almost debilitating. In many cases I would have been given a dressing down before by my own father the late Rev Bombo who was a teacher. The embarrassment he would have felt I can only imagine as he sat in the staffroom marking other scripts well in the knowledge that Miss Muddu across the table was rolling her eyes after marking yet a hopeless biology answer booklet from me. I never had a comeback for my failures because he knew why. And then at report signing, some form of corporal punishment was given not because I was a random student but because oli mwaana waffe.

My first encounter with Mr Busulwa at the end of the first term in 1989 will never get out of my head. I was in S4. He took one look at my report card, and before he even suggested it, I was waiting for my five kibokos.  I thought he would stop there….No. He demoted me back to S3!!! The walk of shame back into S3A after a whole term was sheer torture. The other students had already settled in their own places so I had to find someone kind enough to share their desk with this “repeater”.

It was a while later that one teacher Miss Margaret Kusasila realised that I may have had a condition called dyslexia. When I heard of it I nearly jumped out of my skin. What did that mean? I never read much about it but looking back I now understand why the rest of my family are mathematicians and I can hardly solve a quadratic equation.

The Late Mr Bawuba Center back row.

My disinterest in the finer points of the Periodic Table or the different layers of the skin was also studied by the Late Mr Bawuba and his wife Christine Bawuba. By 1990, other teachers were also agreeing to the emerging wisdom that I was probably better at something. I was spending a lot of time reading with Godfrey and  Andrew Songa, both very intelligent in class yet their intelligence never rubbed off me.

When I joined journalism school everythingl fell into place. For the first time I sat in a class and whatever was being taught to me seemed like common sense. It was only then that I learned to enjoy what the rest of my friends had been enjoying since we started school. Here I was sixteen years later actually enjoying school because I was studying something that I actually understood. If only this had been discovered earlier maybe I wouldn’t have rebounded so many times.

Of Dark Corners and Derus.....

Gonza Lukanga Kagwas take on Phil Collins' Groovy Kind Of Love in 1988 was absolutely spot on. It was the inter house music competition and Africa house had to produce a song like no other. It was the best kept secret because no one knew who was singing the solo or what was going to be sang. A house or so had sang Nakatanza (as expected) but the competition was high.

Gonza walked on to the stage in top hat and tails!!!! TOP HAT AND TAILS!! OMG!!! No one had seen anything like it. He stood next to the grand piano and what a belter!?!? Even to this day I can hear him sing it. the reason being that I thought that it was his own work. I had never heard of the song. When I later heard Phil Collins sing it, I thought someone had to give loyalties to Gonza.


Gonza at full pelt singing. Photo Curtsey Gonza Kagwa


The song was not only what was poignant at the time. It was rumoured (and I will not confirm or deny this) that the afore mentioned gentleman had the hots for a one LN (initials only please as its only an allegation). Now, LN was ignoring his amorous moves so he conjured up this absolutely flawless performance so as to win the damsel's heart. I don't know whether the plan worked.

But from the above story, we at Budo in those days enjoyed a healthy social life the school being a mixed, coeducational school (what does that mean? Co..what?). Mention words like Bursary, deru and shhhhhh (in small words) dark cornering and many peoples' ears prick up. I can never over emphasise the importance of Saturday roll call when students dressed to thrill! At this juncture, I want you all to think about your position in the roll call line. I was using "Mwenkanya" then so I was near the Nagundis!!! Bliss. If you were a Sse-something, suffer! Wasn't it ever so political? And then we went to the dinning room where upon we would wait for entertainment thereafter.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfVuBIi6Qj0

I was of the Main hall persuasion. Never was a member of the Contact group and if I was ever seen there, I had other ulterior motives (rather get that out of the way soon............choir front line more like).To me, Chapel and The main hall were diametrically opposed. When the late Mr E K Bawuba arrived in 1980, there was a general intake of breath as he belonged to the Bazukufu group. We thought all freedoms were going to be curtailed. how wrong were we? Never did Kings College Budo have derus and house parties like we did in Bawus' time! Never. Lord, did we dance.





Entertainment was varied as we  all know. Derus were the best. Why the hell did we dance in large circles?ela abamu kumwe manyi muli bafuumbo naye nkyababanja!!!  Asadu implored us "Do you want a music oba a filimu?" The Obaces, The Mawanda and The Wabulyas brought the videos. Invasion USA, Deadly Prey, Nails of Death, RAMBO!!!  But I know many of you didnt watch them anti daaka konaring. It was even more dangerous in Chapel. Yes, lets get the secrets out. Those people in Contact had a habit of bringing films on the reel! The worst time was when the film was coming to the end. It would go 5...4....3...2....now if you haven't finished ebibyo Nyenje is about to switch the lights on. So it was always better to have one eye on the thickness of that reel, never the film.



S4 Social with Gayaza Photo by Moses Kinobe

 And then there was the problem of Minyigos. Sorry but this must be mentioned. Promises!!!! Some never materialised

And then that most difficult of all male functions; the walk to Bursary road. I went. I escorted but only escorting someone elses' kyana (you know your self) and the humiliation of escorting someone elses' kyana was final and complete. Because just as you arrived near the drum/bell, you would be relieved of your duties.

Budo had couples that were incredible. I wont mention names now. Abaantu bafuumbo but I know that I can mention Edward Tebandeke and Wini Bemba Kagere. I must submit that this was the cutest couple ever. The two come from the royal clan and there was an ease about them. They were the same height, cracked the same jokes. Even Rev and Kamuhanda never bothered them. There relationship was so sweet that up to this day, I think, Budonians of that era took ownership of it. Both of them moved on after but they are good friends. Their problem (and I think their partners at the moment) is that whenever there is a Budo function, they are pushed together.


As always, Tebandeke and Wini pushed together extreme right.


I write like we never actually went for any lessons. We did. And my next instalment will be on that subject.