Man narrates how he was hospitalized for five years after an accident

“It was difficult for me to accept. I was not used to working. I was a stay-home mother. Sometimes I would just cry.” Those times, according to Ruth Nduta, are becoming fewer and fewer, not because the situation has changed much, but because she is used to hustling.

Her husband was involved in a road accident that left him disabled and confined to a wheelchair.

“I recall that day, 13/7/2007. It was a Friday. I will never forget,” he pauses as if to give me time for the information to sink.

John was a bread distributor in Kayole, but lived in Limuru. He left home at 4:45AM in the morning and never made it to his destination.

“Somebody boarded. As the driver was getting back to the main road, I do not know what happened. I heard a loud bang.”

That would be the sound that he recounts every once in a while when opportunity calls. The loud bang that changed the life of a 33 year old father of four, whose wife was home nursing a new baby.

In total, he spent 5 years in hospital. It is then that he developed bed sores. At some point, death was on his wish list. “I just wanted to die.”  His wife smiles; an easy smile of a woman who is now at home with herself. It has taken her time and tears.

“I told him he cannot die. What would I tell the children? I wanted their father to be there for them.”

By the time he left hospital, he was starting a new life as a man confined to a wheelchair, needy and desperate.

“I want you to understand that it is different when one is born with disability, and when one acquires it as an adult. I already knew what it meant to be whole.” The frustrations are written on his face. He recalls a day it rained, and his wife had hang clothes outside.

“I fell trying to pick them and hurt the same place that has the sores.” He estimates that he needs about Ksh 300 in a day to just manage his situation. Buying new gloves, adult pampers, urine bags, all costs money that he cannot afford.

“You need money to cover the shame. I can hardly control my blunder. Sometimes we are forced to wash the urine bags so that I can recycle them.”

The sense of an emasculated man hovers around random conversations in this home. “The other day I was listening to the radio. They were asking if you can rate the performance of Nairobi County what marks would you give? So I turned to my wife as she was leaving for work and I asked her, if you were to rate me as your husband, what marks would you give me. She did not answer!”

“It is hard. Your wife wakes up and goes out there to hustle and you lie in bed.” There is an uneasy pause followed by a quick rejoinder; “We were okay. I used to make some good money as a bread distributor. Everyday I would make about Ksh 1,500 profit.”

During the year he got the accident, 2007, some people lost their lives as a result of road carnage. That figure has remained almost unchanged. Fluctuating between 2,900 and 3,015 annually.

And for all the pain that his family has been through, all the tears that he has shed, he blames it on reckless drivers. “Either the driver of our car, or the one who was driving the truck, one of them must have caused the accident.”

“I wish, even if they do not care for anybody else, let them think about themselves because they are also at risk.” Njau’s wife is more reconciliatory in her tone.

Njau on his part wishes his plight and that of other accident victims mattered more. He wishes there were more prosecutions of reckless drivers and follow ups on compensation.

“After announcing how many people have died and those injured, there should be a follow up. There are survivors. We are alive but we are dead because we are not productive.”

Over the years, he has collected lots of medical reports, Xrays, receipts, pictures even of this very personal journey. Yet, all that he articulates today might be the same narrative published at the end of this year by yet another road accident victim, if nothing changes.

So far in this year, 871 people have died in road accidents compared to 793 people during the same time last year.

What is striking about John is how keen he is to rise again. He has learned how to knit. One woolen hat costs between Ksh 250 and Ksh 300. Business is not so good lately he says.

His frustrations represent the frustrations of thousands of Kenyans whose lives have ground to a halt as a result of road carnage.