buyondo jimmyUGANDA PROTESTS
May 9th 2011 05:50
Juma Nsubuga sits on his hospital bed with his left leg bandaged in the mid-thigh and the right one on the floor. There are four ladies seated next to his bed. They are all chatting quietly but whenever they try to involve him in their conversation. He just shuts them up.
The 30-year-old farmer and brick layer, who resides in Kasangati Wampewo, was one of the 20 people that were rushed to Mulago Referral Hospital last Friday after they were allegedly shot by police and military as they dispersed demonstrators.
The father of three was visiting his mother on the fateful day. “I was at my mother’s place the day I was shot. I had come to check on her,” he says. He narrates that the following day, which was a Friday, he decided to go to the garden at 8am because people at Kasangati had vowed to demonstrate that day against the brutal way Forum for Democratic Change president Kizza Besigye had been arrested a day earlier.
“So as to get out of the way of the police and the rioters, I went to the garden. It’s in a place called Kisenyi in Kasangati. I stayed there with some other collegues until 12.30p.m.”
Coming home
By that time, Nsubuga had started feeling hungry so he decided to go back home for lunch after which he would return and continue with the digging. “When I got home, I found my mother cooking beans. However, she needed water and she was sending one of my sons to go and collect her some water from the tank. But it was closed. So I offered to get her four jerricans of water from the tap that was across the road,” he recollects.
Nsubuga filled all four jerricans and carried the first two to the house. However, when he was coming out to go and pick the other two jerricans, he saw military men crossing the road and walking towards their house.
“I did not want anything to do with the military because in front of our house, which is facing the road, some people had burnt tyres. So when I saw the military men walking towards our house, I and some other four men started running towards Kisenyi. But I do not know why the military men picked on me because out of the blue, I felt a bullet going through my left thigh. The last thing I remember is having been carried by some men into a car that I did not recognise.”
He woke up later on Friday night on a hospital bed with a blood-soaked bandage around his thigh.
At the moment, his major worry is whether he will walk again. He says: “Since I came here, the medical personnel are always around but they do not have any medicine. I am not sure how long I am going to stay in this place.”
“I am so worried because a man like me who used to move without asking for anyone’s help, I have to wait for my mother to come and support me to the toilet. Even in the toilet, I just have to sit. It does not matter whether the toilet is dirty or not. I have to sit down because I can’t squat.”
“My leg is swollen although I have only been here for a few days. So I am not even sure what might happen as time goes on. I am scared that I might not even be able to walk again. All I want is the doctors to come and treat me. If they can’t, let them amputate me so that I can know that I am completely lame,” he says with tears forming in his eyes.
The farmer is also worried about the state in which his family is in right now.
“I really have a big problem with being in this place because I have a family and other dependents that my mother does not know of. I don’t know what they are up to at the moment. So I am worried about them.”
Financial strain
Nsubuga’s being at the hospital is also causing financial constraints on the family and Ms Zam Nabweteme, his mother, is afraid of how they will make it through. “We have to spend a lot of money on his feeding and other necessities and the fact that both of us are here and none is working, making it harder.”
The patient blames his condition on government. He thus appeals to government to come to his rescue.
“I feel useless lying in this hospital bed and I think it’s the government’s fault. But the message I have for the government is that I am not a leader and I am not a freedom fighter and the only thing I do is what really concerns me. Meaning, I am innocent,” he says.
“So all I am asking from the government is to help save my life so that I can get out of this crippled state I am in right now.”
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