In severe pain, Kiruyi refuses to cry

What began as a normal day turned out to be a dark one for Ayubu Kiruyi, who was knocked down by a lorry as he went to school. The accident that almost cost him his life left 10-year-old handicapped and in pain, writes Emmanuel Ngabire

The clock reads 10:13am and we are at Siraje Baluzibye's home, high up in Banda, Acholi quarters, Kampala. For the past hour or so we have been talking about his 10-year-old son, Ayubu Kiruyi, who was knocked down on October 15, 2011, at about 8:30am near Hass fuel station, Banda, by a truck belonging to Roko Construction Ltd. 

He was on his way to school. Kiruyi's left leg was crushed and had to be amputated. His testicles, irreversibly damaged, had to be surgically removed.

Suddenly Kiruyi seems to jerk. His father, who has been talking, abruptly goes quiet. 

Everyone's eyes are trained on the boy. A tense silence fills the room. With one hand,  Kiruyi scratches at his lower belly. With the other, he grips the wooden table hard for support. His face is contorted in pain. He clenches his teeth in a desperate effort not to cry; but soon his anguished face begins to twitch and the hand with which he is clinging to the table, shakes uncontrollably. 

You can almost see invisible hands prising his lips apart; a strangled cry explodes out of his lips and his eyes well with tears. Kiruyi bites at his lower lip and slowly his face starts to relax a little, his pent up breath coming out in controlled bursts. Everyone in the room knows that the battle has been won. The tears stand unshed in his eyes. Kiruyi will not cry today. 

Every morning, for five months, since he was released from hospital, the bizarre ritual is re-enacted in this humble house. 

Baluzibye says it happens whenever Kiruyi is passing urine into his catheter. 

“I think some of his injuries inside have not healed completely, and so when he is passing urine, some droplets do not get into the tube and instead drop onto those wounds and “burn”  him.” 

I ask Kiruyi why he did not want to cry. “I don't like crying; it is embarrassing to cry,” he replies, smiling shyly. 

Loss of appetite
His mother, Aisha Kiiza is worried that the extreme pain he goes through every time nature calls is making her son averse to food. “He hardly drinks anything at all and he always postpones eating until he absolutely has to.” (As if to confirm this statement, during the course of the interview, while his siblings have their breakfast, Kiruyi refuses to eat and asks his mother to keep it). 

Talking to him, Kiruyi immediately strikes you as friendly and intelligent. He is constantly asking questions and correcting his parents about the details of the accident and his stay in hospital. He remembers, to the last detail, everything that happened that fateful day.

Huge toll
Following the accident, Ayubu was hospitalised for four months. 

He is lucky to have parents who are willing to risk everything to see him get better, but his sickness has taken a huge toll on the family's finances.

The medical expenses have cost his mother her business. “I used to sell fish in the market at Banda, but I was forced to use money from the business to help fund his treatment. Now I have nothing,”                                     she says.

 His father too has had to pay dearly. “I was working as a security guard in Basra, Iraq, when my wife called to inform me that our son had been involved in an accident so I took leave and came back home. 

“When I came from Iraq, I had about sh5m on my account. I thought that was a lot of money, but very soon all of it had been spent in hospital bills and other expenses.” 

Since then, Baluzibye has not had a moment's rest. He has left no stone unturned — in fact he has turned a few of them over a couple of times - in search of help for his son. He has a file full of letters of appeal to various authorities: the RDC, the executive director Mulago, the state minister for health, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health; everyone that he thinks can help him with his son.

Although he is grateful for the help he has gotten from a number of people and organisations, there are still a number of hurdles left to overcome.

Siblings affected
Meanwhile, Ayubu's siblings —his elder sister in S3 and two young ones in nursery school  have all been sent away from school due to failure to pay school fees.

 Baluzibye laments: “We also used to hire a teacher from Ayubu'sschool to tutor him at home for a small fee, but we cannot afford that anymore either.”  “I wish we could get some people to help us with the surgery. Other things will come with time,” Baluzibye appeals. 

Who knows? Maybe help will come. After all, Ayubu (Job in English) is the biblical man of many sorrows who was tried severely by God for a time, but was later richly blessed by Him. 

Will jolly, little Kiruyi's grim fortunes be similarly reversed?

All the flesh on my left leg had been torn off
AYUBU Kiruyi narrates his ordeal: That day, I was woken up by my mother. I had overslept. She told me to wash my face and prepare for school. When I had finished she asked me to wait outside the house for her. I thought she wanted me to go and wait for her at the SDA church near our home from where I normally used to wait, so I went there instead. 

When I got there, I asked a man who was standing nearby what time it was. He said it was 8:00am. Classes start at that time. I knew I would be late if I waited for mummy, so I decided to go to school on my own. 

I walked towards the Banda stage, where I asked another man to help me cross. He took my hand and led me to the other side of the road, near Hass fuel station. But suddenly, I heard people screaming. I turned to look behind and saw a big lorry coming towards us. The man I was with let go of my hand and jumped over a nearby ditch. Next thing I knew, I had been knocked by the lorry and it was dragging me along the ground with it.

 A short while later it stopped. People were shouting “Omwana bamukoonye! Omwana bamukoonye...” (the child has been hit!). The driver came out shaking and he was speaking on the phone saying: “Nkoony'omuntu, nkoony'omuntu”. (I've hit someone). 

I did not feel any pain, but for some reason every time I tried to sit up, I could not and I wondered why.

All the flesh on my left leg had been torn off. Only the bone remained and it was cracked. I looked at my knee. It looked like a round white ball and water (sic) was coming out of it. People crowded around us. The driver was still pretending to be on phone. Someone asked me my mother's name. I told them to check in my bag (it was still on my back) for my book. My mother's number was written on the book cover.

 “Then I saw the driver (still speaking on the phone) wriggling out of the crowd. I said: “Omusajja wuuyo adduka, omusajja wuuy'adduka”, (the man is running away), but there was so much noise that no one heard me. Two men dressed like priests parked nearby, asked what happened and offered to take me to Mulago Hospital.

Expert view

Why he didn't feel pain
To me, it is incredible that Ayubu remained conscious and alert under the circumstances, but he is insistent that that was the case. Dr. Angela Kabatooro says it is possible that the boy was numb to the pain for a while. “He might have been in shock”, she explains. “The excess adrenaline the body released in moments of great shock can make you insensitive to pain for some time, and if no major blood vessels in his leg were ruptured during the accident, there was no reason for him to pass out. It might explain why he remained lucid.”

****************************

He needs sh3m surgery 

By Emmanuel Buufu

 The most immediate hurdle Kiruyi faces is raising about sh3m for a surgery that needs to be done to remove his catheter and reconstruct his urinary system. 

“The surgery was slated for June 9, but could not be carried out because we had not found the money,” a frustrated Baluzibye reveals.

 Every extra day the catheter remains, the possibility of infection increases. Worse still, since they cannot afford the antibiotics that were prescribed for the boy's treatment (they cost about sh60,000 per week), he has not been taking them and the effects are beginning to show. These days, Ayubu's urine comes with a little pus and blood. 

In addition, the boy will need to have an artificial replacement of his hip and leg (hip disarticulation), since his entire leg was amputated. Each artificial limb costs sh3m and he will need to replace it six times until he is 18 and has stopped growing. 

“Luckily,” Baluzibye reveals, “The first one has already been paid for by the National Drug Authority; but Kiruyi cannot use it before the surgery is done.” 

Finally, because he lost his testes, which manufacture the male hormone, testosterone, Kiruyi will need to be put on hormone therapy from about the age of 15 onwards. 

Your turn
If you are in position to help Kiruyi, send an email to csr@newvision.co.ug. or a text on 8338. type SUNDAYVISION leave a space insert your message and name and send