Straight road… midnight… good speed… stalled, unmarked truck… a swerve to the other lane… oncoming headlights… crash!

And then silence as time is suspended. My entire 36 years of existence play before my eyes. The things that matter most. The things that should not have mattered. A lingering feeling that this may be the end.

And then the car lands, and it’s time for chaos.

—

This is what happened on that fateful night two weeks ago. My friend had called me that he had a quick trip out of town, just across the border in Tanzania and would I like to take him? I wanted. It was a so-so Friday without any plans and work was wrapping up. So, I parked my car at a friend’s office on Mombasa Road to pick it later, and off we went, did the business and were heading back. We had just left Namanga Town. He had carried his selection of the best veve. We collected the stakabadhi (njugu, water) and I settled on the back seat of the Toyota Prado to enjoy life with adabu.

One lingering thought, though. I needed to pee pee, so I kept telling myself that we would stop somewhere along the way at a service station. Normally, we would have stopped by the roadside and shoot to the bushes, but Kajiado is arid and there could be snakes. Imagine snakes biting snakes.

We were cruising, chatting happily. The road was as clear as the straight Namanga Road can be at midnight. Until the darkness ahead became a trailer stalled in the middle of the road without any lights, reflectors or warnings. Those things kill. They killed my friend Mfa.

A scream, and my friend at the driving wheel veered off the lane just in time to avoid it.

But then, right there and then, an oncoming vehicle.  I watched in slow motion as metal approached metal and bang! I have never experienced such violence and shock as my body absorbed the force of a head of collision between two big SUVs travelling at speed… before everything went quiet even as our vehicle went flying.

I honestly knew I was dying and I didn’t even have time to pray. Memories flashed before my eyes. I remembered my children and my mother and I knew this would devastate them.

—

When the car landed, there was surprisingly no pain and no panic.  Everything paused and was quiet  for a long time… for too long.

Then I realized I wasn’t breathing, and I went into full survival mode. Unbuckled, started looking for a way out of the car. People had already started arriving and were scrambling to open the car. Have you ever wondered where people come from during road accidents? It was past midnight and there were people. They helped me out of the car and I was pointing at my chest and my nose and trying to say I could not breath.

They tried to make me lie down by the side of the road and I remembered all the movies where they say “keep moving, don’t close your eyes” and I wouldn’t let myself lie down.

I was hyperventilating. I heard children cry from the other car, my heart sank. I remembered my own.

There was noise everywhere as people tried to help (humans are beautiful species). Kenya’s response is its citizenry because emergency services don’t work. They handed me my phone and asked me to call 999, 911 , 900 and any other numbers I knew, as they also tried to do the same.

I instead called Alex. Alex, my closest friend since childhood, always, somehow, figures something out. He picked (he always does) and I painstakingly told him “Accident. Namanga” and I could not say more.

—

A Good Maasai (because he wasn’t a Samaritan) picked us in his car, crammed all of us in and took us to a hospital back in Namanga called Namanga Nursing Home. Good man, that one. I have been praying for him – there are several vehicles that zoomed past us. May he buy a van or bus to help even more people, because he carried all 7 of us in his Nissan WingRoad.

And that was a very sad ride. We were all mostly crying in anguish. I think when the Bible talks about hell being about kulia na kusaga meno, maybe that’s what it meant.  There was loud praying, yelping, doing those ssssss sounds, an occasional scream, asking the driver to open or close the windows because no temperature was perfect. It was either too hot or too cold.

Anyway, good small hospital, too. As soon as we arrived, they treated it as a proper emergency – wheeled us in, administered pain shots and IVs, doing X Rays and ultrasounds – before asking us for a single cent like most hospitals in Kenya would do. Lives came first for them.

Fast forward – my chest was clear, my hand was not broken… but the ultrasound of my abdomen showed that I had internal fluids and they were not sure if it was blood or something else. I needed a CT scan ASAP. They suggested Arusha or Kajiado.  I asked them to take me to MP Shah in Nairobi so that I am closer to my family.

Remember my full bladder? I still had this urge to pee, so they wheeled me to the Gents. I leaned on the wall and tried to pee, nothing came. They then took me to a sitting toilet, nothing came. Or no, something came. Pain. Lots of pain. More pain than I have ever felt my entire life. I almost fainted. I had to be IV’d painkillers again.

The nurse suggested doing a catheter. I had just read a horror story on how catheters are attached that same week. There was no way I was giving these female nurses my ninio to insert a catheter. Told them I didn’t need it.

Little did I know…

—

Long story short. I was put in an ambulance, got to MP Shah, got the scans and tests, was put into another ambulance to Aga Khan where I was taken straight into emergency surgery.

My bladder had popped like a balloon and spilled its contents into my abdominal cavity. That’s what happens when you have a full bladder and enough force is exerted on it…

Empty that damn bladder.

They cut my tummy open (it’s called a laparotomy – look it up), cleaned my organs like utensils, rearranged them, repaired the bladder, and sewed me up. With staples. I have staples like a book.

They attached the catheter (bag ni ya mkojo mtoto), they even shaved my fudhi – who does that? They violated me while I lay unconscious. 🙂 Mficha uchi and other stories.

The first time I opened my eyes in HDU, I swear I felt like I had just been born. I had no recollection of life before. I could have died and not even realized it (of course). Dying is that easy. I learned later that I was in surgery for 8 hours. Alex was by my bedside when I woke up. He looked eerily familiar but I didn’t know him. Like someone I knew from a previous life.

Over the next several hours, people came to see me in HDU. Lots of people. I think people like me. They were all blurred although I could recognise everyone. I couldn’t talk because I had tubes in my nostrils and mouth. Just silent appreciation that they came. Some cried. I laughed internally. The tubes and the machines are scary from the other side, I guess.

The worst had passed…