Seven months pregnant woman treks from Jinja to Mukono

COVID-19 | TRANSPORT

MUKONO - After starving for two days at her brother's home, Jamawa Nakalanzi, 36, decided to leave Jinja and return home in Kisugu Kampala.

Nakalanzi said she had visited her brother Isma Kalanzi at Bugembe village in Jinja district for over two months.

"As I was planning to go back to Kampala and find my four other children whom I left at home alone, the coronavirus emerged prompting President Yoweri Museveni to declare a lockdown and curfew.

"Unfortunately, Kalanzi who is a boda boda rider has two wives and five children. He was greatly affected by the lockdown that he reached the extent of failing to provide food for some days to his two homes," she narrated.

Nakalanzi is seven months pregnant so when it came to missing food for two days, she couldn't handle it any longer.

Nakalanzi and her daughter

 
She decided to pack her things, together with her seven-year-old daughter, and left for her home at Kisugu in Makindye division, Kampala district.

She says: "We left on Friday at 4:00 am. I had no money, therefore, on the way, we depended on water from the public water sources we came across as we walked."

At 8:30 pm, Nakalanzi said, she reached Wantoni Cell in Mukono district when she was so tired and hungry.

She asked for shelter from a good Samaritan who housed them for that night and handed them over to the Wanton Police Station on Saturday morning.

Sr. Jesca Zalwango, a midwife at Mukono General Hospital said Police took Nakalanzi and the daughter to the hospital at around 1:00 pm when she was complaining of pain.

Nakalanzi also said she had started breeding.  However, Sr. Zalwango said when she conducted the medical examination, both Nakalanzi and the fetus were in good health.

When asked whether the hospital had managed to feed the hungry Nakalanzi and her daughter, Zalwango, said they hadn't because she was also working on an empty stomach.

Nakalanzi left her four children at Kisugu in the care of her 10-year-old son who before the COVID-19 pandemic used to go out and do casual work which paid him and he provided food to his siblings.

"Their father abandoned me after losing his job in Kampala and he decided to go back to Busoga," she said.

Sr. Zalwango said they were making arrangements to get an ambulance and take Nakalanzi at home.

The New Vision learnt that Nakalanzi reached her home safely. She calls upon the well-wishers to help her with food, medication, clothing and other welfare items as she is left with less than two months to give birth.