Death at the door steps of Mulago

By Henry Mutebe

I made 32 years on 10^th October 2018. I awoke to the bright gaze of the morning sun, and the distant chuckle of the mother hen and her inquisitive chicks as they peck the ground for the “morning worm”.  I could hear the children run around and in a short while they had succeeded in disturbing the morning calm. My “Mutebelets,” as I fondly call them, shower me with love measured in outstretched arms reaching for the earth’s corners.  These jostled me out of my “half-awake, half-asleep state”. The daily early morning routine of nonchalance raises its arms in an obvious surrender and leaves the room, defeated. 

That morning, before going to work, a friend and I decided to take a detour and head to Mulago Hospital. The nation’s referral hospital. Mulago is set on a hill, maybe a symbol of the uplifting power of healing within its walls or simply an iconic look of hope for the sick. It may just be what it is, a place where the sick come to with the hope of finding healing.

My last visit to the causality ward in particular had planted chilling and disturbing images in my mind.

Inside a hospital, you start to appreciate how simple moments, we often take for granted, are important and ought to be valued. The situation is fragile, tense desperate and nearly everyone is on the edge, from the nurses in their medical regalia that stroll past, most of them in a hurry, to the doctors donning white lab coats. They too seem to be under the heavy burden and responsibility to preserve life. The air is thick with a strong smell of surgical spirit, so thick that one could touch it, feel it, and rub it on the hospital walls. A forlorn cloud seems to linger in some of the wards, mixing greatly with the smell of disease.  But in some of these places too, you will find hope. The hope of one leaving healed after months of putting up a resistance against a malady whose potency was murderous. The hope of a newborn child whose cry pierces through the air-maybe a bold announcement of one’s arrival on earth.

In the same hospital walls, you meet families and friends, held together by a tight rope of pain and sorrow-brothers and sisters locked in silence carrying life’s baggage of pain, sorrow, and at times a rare mix of hope. You get to men and women fighting to stay alive as they hold onto their spirits to prevent them from flying out of their frail bodies.  A machine beeps at a distance, a rhythmic beep at a continuous, unbroken pace. A medical guru nearby, tells me that it monitors the heartbeat.  Some have their mouths and nose covered in a cup-like gadget. It gives them oxygen I am told. From their hospital beds, you can tell that each of them is holding onto what is left, or any sign of life in them.  

Outside the hospital walls, you hardly care to listen to your heart and appreciate its rhythmic beat. In the hospital, machines are placed on patients to monitor the heart as it beats. Often a family member or medic with, held breath watches over a loved one as machines monitor and try to keep his tired heart going. It is strange how a perfect state of health veils us from the vulnerability and fragility of life. Life can be cruel to some.

That morning my friend Godfrey and I decided to visit the children’s ward. The children’s ward tells an especially poignant story. We wanted to witness first hand: the stories of teenage mothers facing parenthood far too soon, many abandoned by partners. Young girls, barely past childhood themselves trying to navigate the twin labyrinths of early motherhood and the weight of bringing forth life, often alone. It’s a testament to society’s failings.

Life outside hospital walls shields us from our own fragility. We rarely pause to appreciate our beating hearts until machines are used to monitor them, rarely value each breath until oxygen becomes a precious resource. Within these walls, while some corridors echo with sorrow, others resonate with hope – the triumphant cry of a newborn, the hope of one leaving healed after months of putting up a resistance against a malady whose potency was murderous. In these moments, we’re reminded that our responsibility extends beyond our personal happiness to touching others’ lives with compassion.

At the entrance of Mulago, we saw something that sunk our hearts deep in the bottomless sea of pain. From the hospital’s main entrance one can clearly see the road heading to Kamwokya. It is from this view that we were met by this disturbing sight…

To be continued.…