Amina
on Um Zayd wa Atheer (Uganda), 21/Nov/2009 18:47, 34 days ago
AminaUgandan time keeping is unreliable in the extreme. Agreed times pass unnoticed and people turn up later than late despite pleas for 'Be prompt', 'Keep time', 'Muzugu (white man's) time'. Schedules for meetings and workshops need to have built in time margins, need to be realistic. Few people have watches; many walk many miles to arrive anywhere, the sun guiding their time, direction and energy. Time is when it happens.And so it was a delight to meet Amina, a Miirya Project Village Volunteer. She believes in good time keeping. When we arranged our first workshop at Kigezi Health Centre she arrived before us and did so on each of the 3 days. Amina proved to be exceptional in other ways too. She is dedicated to her community, working as a Traditional Birth Attendant whilst supervising others, teaching reading and writing to adults and being a voice for change at her Health Centre and mosque.Just before I returned to Masindi, early last March, Amina was knocked from the back of a motorcycle and her life changed. As she was moved from hospital to private clinic she carried with her a compound fracture of her left tibia and fibula. The care she received in those early hours came at a price in more ways than one. The X-ray and Plaster of Paris had to be paid for, the assessment and application beyond the skills of the attending doctor. With her leg set in plaster Amina was sent home to her mud hut, naturally believing that the fracture would heal and she would then continue her active caring life. Feeling that she was failing the Miirya Project she started sending her son Wahab to represent her at our meetings. He wrote everything down in a notebook and took it back to Amina. She did not want to be left out. At the same time Wahab was enjoying being a 'volunteer.' As weeks became months and it was clear that he shared his mother's values and empathy we gave him a Miirya T-shirt and officially welcomed into the Project. We waited for Amina to improve and return.Stephen and I made several visits out to Kigezi to check how Amina was getting on. The plaster had been changed and eventually removed in early June. She had been sold a crude pair of homemade crutches and told to exercise. Unfortunately she could not stand, let alone walk and spoke about the bone still moving in her leg. We thought that after her trauma that she had lost confidence and so made all the right encouraging noises. We returned to see her again last week, 9 months after the accident. She is still unable to weight bare. She calls the circle of dust around her hut her playground where her only activity is to hop on her right leg using the crutches. She has not left her compound since the 9th of March, unable to use the pit latrine, bathe, and care for herself, her family, her community or go to the mosque.Amina needed help and there was only one place to turn. In Kampala there are several government and private hospitals. Masindi patients dread being referred, how will they get there, how will they afford to pay for transport, care and food? Even in the government hospital, little is free. If someone dies in Kampala how will the body be brought home to Masindi? Most refuse and await their fate here. The International Hospital Kampala (IHK) is a hospital, which uses profits to run a charity called 'Hope Ward'. Having referred several other Masindi patients there I knew that this was where I must take Amina. When I asked if she agreed to go she answered, 'Pamela, nkwenda kurubata', 'I want to walk'. That was last Thursday and the one-day trip to Kampala for an assessment happened this Wednesday.We left Masindi on the 7am bus and arrived back at 9pm. Amina had last been to Kampala as a child in 1978. As the day progressed she visibly shrunk with apprehension, tiredness, amazement and confusion. IHK is a giant step into a developed country, you could be anywhere in the UK or the States and Amina struggled to take it all in. She had never seen a lift before let alone been in one. Within a few hours the assessment was complete, she had been seen by an orthopaedic surgeon, the leg X-rayed and decisions made. The fractured tibia had not healed and would need pinning, the fractured fibula had partly joined but would need breaking and resetting and she would need a bone graft. After showing us the X-ray I was left with Amina to explain. Without the intervention she would never walk again, with surgery she should be walking in 2 months. We decided to come back home, talk to Amina's husband and then make a decision.For me the decision was obvious. Hope Ward IHK was giving Amina her only chance to start living her life again but I didn't feel it was right to put too much pressure on her. I need not have worried. Despite her fears about the surgery, being in Kampala and a whole new world in IHK Amina's husband readily agreed that she should go ahead. We return to Kampala on Sunday. Theatre and the bed are booked and Amina's husband is to be her attendant. Hope has been given and received and for that we are all thankful. For everything there is a time. AMINA (It means AMEN)