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| Defiantly sitting up! |
One day after I had just stepped
off Urban Televisions’ flagship show press digest I came across a family
sitting in the foyer. They had a scrawny looking kid whom they were carrying.
She looked almost not aware of her surroundings. At New Vision printing and Publishing
Corporation, they get so many people
coming through its front doors looking for help and it is easy to dismiss any
as they come on a daily basis. Frankly, some are trying to “pull a fast one.”
I asked this family if someone
was tending to them and they said no one had spoken to them. Twenty minutes
later, after I had contacted Bukedde Television, I saw that they had been dealt
with. A journalist had taken their story and their plight was going to be aired
on TV. But this kid (that is what I thought because there was hardly anything
of her) hanged on to the man who was carrying her in total silence. I inquired
a bit more what the problem was and I was told that she was suffering from cancer.
I asked what her name was and that was when I was told she was a 20 year old
girl called Annette Namata. I was shocked! She was twenty? I could not believe
how the disease had wasted her.
Here they were and all they were
asking for was UGX87000 (about $26) to buy her medication. I could not believe
that that was the sum that they were looking for; a sum that some of my friends
have happily blown away in an evening on booze. That was the sum they wanted to
save a life for that month. That was what they wanted to save this poor wretched
life. 87K!!! That was when I decided to try and do something. Later on Annette’s
mother confided in me that they came with UGX6000 ($1.76) on them and she had
decided that if they could not get the money, she was going to take her
daughter back home and watch her slip away. That was the situation.
The poverty that this family experiences
is beyond comprehension. I have been to visit them at their home two miles away
from Mawale, a town near Semuto in central Uganda. They have been given what I
can only describe as a poor attempt of putting mud bricks together for a house.
They have no functioning toilet that I saw and the kitchen is simply laughable.
Annette sleeps in a room with a mud a wattle floor. The walls do not connect to
the corrugated iron sheets leaving a gap about ten inches which must let the
rain in on a stormy night.
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| Most times she is alone in her room. |
Every day at 0500AM her mother
has to make the painful decision to walk about a mile or so to go and till the
land for that is what they live off. She has a brother who has to go to school
by 0630AM so from that time until her mother comes back at 1000AM, she is left
to her own devices.
Until recently, her mother used
to buy a cows’ head which she would get as much meat from for sale. That gave
her some income but that has dried up as she has had to continuously fight adversity
in light of her daughters’ health.
The issues surrounding this case
are not isolated. In the villages in parts on Uganda, the locals believe a lot
in the occult. They believe in witchcraft. When Annette started complaining of
headaches and pains, her mother thought someone was playing quick and fancy
with her daughter bewitching her. For four months she was being treated with
pain killers and herbs until her left side seized up and she could not walk.
Her mother sent her to the local health centre who asked her to go to go to the
main referral hospital in Kampala for further diagnosis. Annette got to know
that she had cancer alone. Her mother was not there. Her father has never been
part of her life.
At 100K ($29.25) a month for the
basic drugs, her mother could not afford them. So for a while they simply went
without medication. Her mother has told me that she was once asked for an egg
and she couldn’t afford it. On a good month her income used to be about UGX50K
($14) now anyone can do the maths. That has also dried up.
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| She loves a good old gossip when possible. |
The family thanks all those who
have come to their help. The most
expensive thing is the medicine which they must have. When she needs to see the
doctor, they have to make the journey from the village but in her condition, it
is not possible to come by public means. She must use a privately hired car which with
the mileage, the costs add up.
God has blessed Annette in such a
way that despite her disease she has her appetite. She loves her food. So
contributions have also made sure that she eats well. The last time I visited
her in hospital, she jokingly asked her mother for a yogurt “which her friends
have already sent her.” It was touching to see that the argument between mother
and daughter was about the flavour of yogurt not whether they could afford it.
Annette Namata has stage four
Primitive Neuro Ectodermal Tumour. It is a very rare form of cancer mainly
found in kids. Her doctor has told me that it is incurable. Her brain,
orbit/eye, chest, and abdomen are now affected. She has had 6 sessions of
chemotherapy at the moment which involved vincnstile, cyclophosphade and
Actionolycin D (sorry if I have got the spellings wrong for those of you who
are knowledgeable about these things)
Her main issues now are social.
She needs upkeep. She needs transportation. Her lower body is covered in
bedsores. She also needs physiotherapy.
She thanks all the following (and I will only use first names and Initials
to maintain privacy) Paul W, Julia K, Steven and Cathy K, Paul N.L, Georgina M
and her friends and so many friends her in Uganda. In the UK, Nick E from the
BBC in London thanks so much and “Thamantha” (That is how she pronounces the
name)Samantha J from First Group in Stoke On Trent she loves you guys very much.
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| That is where she has come from. |
My appeal to everyone who is
reading this, please don’t cease with the help. I have some people who have now
offered to actually go and see her in Mawale. She likes visitors. She is only a
20 year old after all. She is also deeply religious so she wants your prayers.
One might ask why I am so taken
up by this case after all there are so many others like her. Simple answer is
that I also don’t know. This poor girl just struck cord in my heart and I
thought let me help. Maybe I was at the right place at the right time. But it
is not about me.
Your help will make sure she has
drugs, she has food, she can go and get physiotherapy, she can live the rest of
her life knowing that outside the walls of her house, a multitude of people she
will probably never know is willing her to live on. That in all her suffering,
in all her poverty she is not alone. That is why over the last two or three
days as a way of putting up the proverbial two fingers to the disease she sat
up in her bed straight!
If you want to help in the appeal to help Annette Namata please contact
me, Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa on +0256789288917 or at mwenky99@gmail.com
