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Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
ON 14 June 2013, my wife, Mrs Caroline Gwakuba Ndlovu and I boarded an Ethiopian 767-300 super-jet aircraft in Harare and headed for Delhi, the Indian capital city. I was very unwell and had been for quite some time following a series of heart attacks. The most serious of these extremely painful angina (pectoris) attacks had occurred one day in February at about midnight. It was most fortunate that that very night, my son, Namati, was at home for the weekend and not at university where he is studying.
He and his mother rushed me to Mpilo Central Hospital where we found a group of nurses who did not know whether or not a doctor would come to the hospital, and, if so, at what time.
The intolerable chest pains I was experiencing were continuing but the nurses said they did not have any medicines whatsoever. As my wife was running up and down the stairs, somebody who was described as a doctor arrived, used a stethoscope to examine me but also emphasised that the hospital was without drugs.
I complained quite bitterly and he disappeared briefly and came back with a morphine tablet in a tablespoon. He wrote us a prescription my wife and son immediately took to Bulawayo’s emergency pharmacy completely unaware that for some time it had stopped operating throughout the night but closes at 2100 hours. We decided to go to UBH where we did not, of course, mention that we had been to Mpilo. At UBH we received a much better reception than at Mpilo.
Doctors were available, and gave me more professional and personalised attention than I had got at Mpilo. The snag was that the institution was also short of medicines. So, we were given prescriptions plus some panadol.
Incidentally, I am allergic to penicillin, aspirin, all sulphur-based drugs chloramphenicol and streptomycin. By about eight o’clock the following morning, we were buying the prescribed drugs in town. I took them as indicated, but later brought up a development which reduced the chest pains a great deal.
Two days later, I received a telephone call from a nephew in Harare, Bulukani Timothy Kumile Masola. He said he was coming to Bulawayo to take me to a heart specialist in Harare and that I should be ready on 1 March 2013 at seven o’clock in the morning.
At 12 noon on that day, he ushered me into the Diagnostic Heart Centre of Professor J A Matenga along Harare’s Josiah Tongogara Avenue. Other nephews and their spouses were all there, quite a crowd that prompted the renowned cardiologist to remark: “What brings all you people here, including my Goromonzi School former schoolmate.”
He had spotted my elder sister’s first born, Mrs Mejory Goche (nee Gwindi) who retorted in Shona: “We have brought our mother here.” (A critical translation from Shona). She pointed at me, and I deeply felt not only the richness of Bantu languages, but the deep filial feelings of my sister’s daughters, their husbands and my nephews towards me.
Professor Matenga examined me for quite a while and concluded that Zimbabwe could not successfully deal with my cardiac problem. He suggested that I should go to one of the following countries: South Africa, India, United Kingdom or Canada. Meanwhile, he prescribed some medicines to keep me afloat till I could go to one of those countries.
Back in Bulawayo after a couple of days, I started living on a heavy diet of tablets prescribed by the professor.
However, to my wife, and me we could not easily raise about $18 000 to cover air travelling, boarding, food and medical expenses. As we were agonising over the matter my condition worsened.
I spent sleepless nights, went back to UBH hoping against hope that one of the doctors and physicians there might somehow cure me. During those days I could not feel my pulse. It was at that time that the Bulawayo Metropolitan Governor, Cain Mathema, found me seated miserably in my car along 9th Avenue in Bulawayo. I was in dire pain and misery.
On telling him that I was ill and that doctors say I could be treated only abroad, but that to do so I needed about $18 000, he literally vocally exploded;
“Look Gwakuba, you spent years fighting for the liberation of this country. I myself found you in Lusaka where you received and guided me. Zimbabwe should help you to live. Go to Chronicle and ask them to run a story stating that you urgently need some financial assistance for vital medical services. People will chip in with whatever and you can top it up for the required medical services.”
I walked over to Chronicle and gave the newsroom the story. The following morning I received a cell-phone call from a Mr Dube in the city’s light industrial site. He told me to go to his office and collect $50. That was all I raised through that story.
Meanwhile, we in Bulawayo were utterly unaware that the Harare team that had taken me to Prof Matenga was far ahead in preparatory terms for me to fly to India. A day or two after the story appeared my heart “deeped” and I felt sinking spiritually. My grand-nephew, Thumani Ndlovu, gave me $100.
Pastor Stephen of Christ Embassy came to our house and prayed so devoutly, so deeply that I felt much strength lift up my heart, so to speak. A day later Bulukami Masola phoned to say I and my wife should catch the earliest coach with all our essentials, toiletries and whatever odd and ends for Harare in readiness to leave for India.
We took whatever we deemed desirable. Our passports had expired decades ago. We did, however get to Harare. My nephew Leslie Tafadzwa Gwindi and his cousin Bulukani Masola met us at the coach’s staging post. The following day, Gwindi’s good wife Monica (Amai Chodiwa) took us to the passport office where within two days or so we were given brand new passports valid for a decade.
On 14 June, a smaller team saw us off from Harare International Airport. It comprised nephew Bulukani Masola, Mrs Caroline Mutsambiwa, granddaughter the amiable Keitumetsi and her husband and two or so other relatives.
The entire Harare team that made the whole project succeed were Masola and his good wife Dr Masola, Sydney Mutsambiwa and his dear wife Caroline, Mr and Mrs Nicholas Goche, Leslie Tafadzwa Gwindi and his angelic wife Amai Chodiwa. Keitumetsi and her kindly husband Zwawanda, and, of course, the modest but most compassionate Dr Lai Akerele and his darling wife, Tryphine (nee Ndlovu).
Not to be left out is the mother of most of these golden–hearted people Mrs Clara Mpiwa, I B Gwindi and Harare’s wonderful couple, Mr and Mrs Boyman Mancama who kept in close contact and remembered us in their prayers all the time.
In Bulawayo, Mrs Ntekula kept us before God till our return, so did my beloved niece Mrs Oriel Ntamana Nkomo of Plumtree and all other relatives all over Zimbabwe, including my youngest brother Zibani Gwakuba.
We arrived in Delhi on 15 June having flown from Harare to Lusaka, then across Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Addis Abba whence we crossed the Indian Ocean to Delhi. No sooner had we arrived than I was subjected to a series of medical investigations and tests. June 15 was a Saturday. On Monday, 17 June, doctors told me that my heart was functioning at 25 percent capacity and that, three coronary blood vessels were blocked and parts of my heart had “died” during some of the heart attacks I had suffered off and on since 1969. I was then fulltime in the armed national liberation struggle.
No effective medical treatment had been given to me during or after those attacks. What I was given were only pain killing drugs. However, said the doctors, they would carry out what they termed “viability assessment” of my heart following their discovery of a “severe left ventricle systolic dysfunctional, LVEF …. 25 percent. In addition to that, the medical team also found that, “native three vessels were diseased.”
Heading this medical group was the director and head of the Artemis Hospital’s Cardiological Department, Dr M S Sandhu, assisted by the Associate Consultant, Dr Sanjat Chiwane. The viability assessment was to try and improve my heart’s functional strength to enable it to bear the strain of the surgical operation I was to undergo.
But as for me, I had made up my mind that it was better to breathe my last under the scalpel of the heart surgeon and return to Zimbabwe in a coffin than to come back with the same failing heart and its disabling pains and failures.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired Bulawayo-based journalist. He recently went to India where he underwent a specialist heart surgery. The next part of his experience will appear on Monday. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or [email protected]
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