I have urinated on myself for 50 years
May 06, 2012
Along a village path in Bugembe, Jinja district, lies Veronica Nandego’s one-roomed brick-and-sand house. Although she does not remember her birth date, her facial features and cotton-white hair prominently state that she is in the league of 70 years plus.
By Watuwa Timbiti
It is coming to 5:00pm and she is seated on her verandah, thoughtfully, but feebly mingling millet bread, which doubles as her lunch and supper for the day. Years ago, she could easily recognise me and yell out my name, but this time she cannot for her sight is waning.
On close observation, the surface where she is seated looks wet and a few obstinate flies irritatingly buzz around her, intermittently disrupting the smooth flow of her meal.
It is the pungent smell of urine that has hovered around her for 50 years that the flies are interested in.
For a period as long as this, Nandego has had to undergo agony, regret, self-rejection and stigmatisation as a result of a labour ward operation that went wrong, affecting her urinary functions. She has had an uncontrollable urine flow, day and night, for the bigger part of her life.
“It happened in 1962 during the birth of my third born, which was by C-section. I did not have a chance to see this baby. I was only told it was a boy. I was unconscious because the whole birth process was difficult due to unbearably long labour pains. The doctors said I had a lot of water in the womb, which had to be removed. This was the most painful experience of my life. I was operated on in Jinja Hospital. It is from here that my 50 years of gloom started,” she recalls.
Nandego was later referred to Mulago Hospital, where she was operated on to stop giving birth — any other attempt to give birth, according to the doctors, would smother her life.
“I knew that marked the end of my attempt at motherhood. I was quite unmoved by it because I felt I had reached the ceiling of disillusionment and self-rejection. I was stinking and it was an inescapable reality. Some of the women facing a similar problem in Ward 5C in Mulago actually committed suicide. They could not stand the leaking — they would break down and cry,” she says.
“I could not kill myself because I always feared that God would one day ask me why I destroyed my life. So I decided to suffer until the end,” Nandego adds.
All alone
Losing her third child hit her at the deepest point of grief because she had lost her second born shortly before, who was also by C-section, following complications that emanated from an accidental injection into his spinal cord.
Unfortunately still, the real salt in the wounds of her loss was rubbed hard when her first born, who was now her remaining thread of hope, eventually died in 1966.
Her father had forcefully taken her away from Nandego, despite her pleas to let the child live with the missionary sisters, who wanted to pay her school fees and nurture her into religious life. As fate would have it, he took her to live with his mother, who was in the process of marrying another woman’s husband.
“Gripped by jealousy and a false sense of fear, the other woman inadvertently poisoned my daughter, instead of mother-in-law. She developed a swollen stomach which eventually burst,” she says with her eyes cast down in painful reflection.
This marked the genesis of Nandego’s lone and uncertain journey in life — a journey with no child to turn to, love or share with moments of difficulty or joy.
Sadly, no eventful relationship progressed on between her and the fathers of her children. The men, who she says she heard passed on, abandoned her.
Public humiliation
“One time I went to church little knowing that I had not padded myself well. I realised the congregation was uncomfortable and murmuring — I had left a trail of urine in the aisle. I tell you, I felt so inadequate and worthless. Worse still, sometimes, especially in church, I hear people complain that there is urine smelling around. And whenever they realise that I am the inconvenience, they laugh or smile surprisingly. This saddens me the more. In my heart, I wish they would not laugh because mine is an incapacitation I did not call for, but a result of probably criminal negligence by the medics. Honestly, people must not laugh at misfortune because everyone is a potential victim,” she counsels.
Painfully, Nandego has not only withstood the stench, but also wounds on her thighs due to the continued burning effect of urine. Some urine, she says, trickles from the navel, burning her big-size breasts, especially when she is seated.
“Cockroaches and other urine-friendly insects attack me, especially in the night. The back and arms hurt me a lot. I just crawl to and from the house or sometimes I just get support from the walls. Before I lost strength, I used to sell some waragi. I later got a casual job at the Jinja district local government offices as a garden attendant,” she says.
Notably, Nandego has not only battled the inconveniences of urine flow, but an accumulation of age and weight-related diseases that have, over the years, devoured her energy and subsequently changed her view of life. Pessimism seems to be getting the better of her, fuelled by her increasing inability to go to church.
“I do not have a mattress and bed sheets. I now have rags to sleep on. The mattresses cannot be maintained for long. I need a liquid proof mattress that does not absorb urine. I also really need food since I am too weak to work now. Also, I have been told that there is a place in Masaka where I can get healed through prayer. However, I do not have the transport fare and upkeep money while there. Let people of good will help me please,” she appeals.
Early childhood
Unlike most people born into the embers of unconditional parental love and drink from the cup of motherly care, Nandego’s troubled life was sealed from the beginning of her existence on earth. Her father died when she was still too young to understand what death meant.
Puzzlingly, she did not see her mother and cannot even tell what she looked like. Her relatives only told her that she (her mother) was bewitched and died, following her rejection of lustful advances from a village man.
Immersed in such complexities too big for her tender mind to make sense of, the missionary sisters in Budini filled that hollow parental gap in Nandego’s life. They enrolled her into Budini Primary School and later took her to Nkokonjeru in 1948 to train as a religious person.
Ironically, life was not as rosy as Nandego expected.
Leaving the convent
“I could not move on. I requested to leave that very year. There was a lot of work, for example, carrying firewood from the forest and food for the nuns. I was too fat and had unusually big breasts for a girl of my size, compared to my colleagues. So, I could not move so fast. I was almost always late for every event in school. Coming late meant being punished by kneeling and being made fun of by the nuns for being unserious,” she recalls with a stern look on her face.
“At times, the punishments were linked to food. I would be given posho and beans and my colleagues would eat matooke and other foods considered good, according to our understanding then as young people,” Nandego adds.
Her decision to abandon the call to religious life took many by surprise, including her mother superior. The community in her home village in Kaliro district, too, was speechless — she had been their epitome of teenage virtue.
Attempts to talk her into re-examining her decision bore no tasty fruits — it was such a steely resolve on her part, compounded by the ebbing teenage itch to commence a new life.
But, fate still had the better of her. Upon returning to the village, it was not a straight path. With the little resources at home, in 1949, she went back to Nkonkonjeru to train as a primary school teacher.
Misfortune continues
“I did not succeed here either, even beyond a term. I did not have basic requirements such as bed sheets, hoes, pairs of shorts and dresses. So the school management one evening sent away all students in my category back home. We did not have transport from the school to the railway station in Mukono. So we walked all the way,” she says.
Getting onto the train and starting the journey back home marked Nandego’s departure from the life she had envisioned. “It saddened me a lot that I could not afford such necessities. For the first time perhaps, I understood why my parents should have lived longer — the nuns in Budini could no longer help me.”
However, I later worked at a missionary health centre in Iganga briefly and then moved on to Palisa district, where I attempted tailoring. However, I was a slow learner and gradually lost interest in the whole venture, moving back to Budini.
It is at this point that my relatives, especially my aunt, pressured me into marriage. The pressure entangled me into marriage to a village man, who already had two wives. It is with this man that I got my first born in 1960.