The little girl who refused to give up fight for her dear life

Bernard Omondi is an administrator at the University of Nairobi’s College of Health Sciences based at the Kenyatta National Hospital. His daughter Diana was a Standard 8 pupil at Msongari whose class along with Standard Seven pupils was making a school excursion to Isiolo.

The bus crashed and Diana suffered severe head injuries. It was thought that she couldn’t live but with a combination of unusual human intuition, calmness of spirit and hope, Omondi held her hand and talked her lifeless body back to life. Witnesses who saw it thought it looked like an apparition.

This week, Omondi retraced his extraordinary journey to The Saturday Nation.

The trip

“The kids had just closed school. It was a mixture of Class 8 students and Class 7. It had been discussed for the whole term. And as parents, we did our usual routine in the morning – we took the kids to school and handed over them to the teachers. It was a very happy moment, saying ‘bye bye, enjoy yourselves, be good, learn a lot, take care’ and that kind of thing.

They were taking longer than usual to get their logistics together and I said, well, I should leave for work. Some other parents, especially mothers hung around longer. I didn’t exactly like the fact that they were using the old big bus as opposed to one of the brand new smaller buses the school had. I thought all Standard 8 pupils could fit into such a bus.

I had a normal day and was preparing to wind it up when the first call came at about 6pm. I was envisaging that the kids should be reaching where they were going since the entire trip was to take place during the day and there should be no movement during the night.

The phone call came from my friend, John Kagagi. And it was like, ‘hey, have you talked with Diana?’ I said ‘no, I talked to her around noon and not since then.’ John then asked me whether I could get in touch with any of the teachers on the trip and I asked him, ‘Is there a problem?’ He said ‘no, no, but...we think...there could a problem...’

I tried calling the teachers who were on the trip but none were picking my calls. I tried calling the school; the phones were not being answered. But I started picking up bits from here and there that there had been an accident. But there was no information at all, only these snippets of it.

There’s one girl who didn’t go on the trip. She happened to be a friend to my daughter. She called me and asked: ‘Have you talked to Diana?’

I replied: ‘No, why?’

She said ‘I’ve also been called by somebody else and there seems to be a problem but nobody is saying what the problem is’. I started getting nervous because my battery was running low. I called John and asked him: ‘What are your plans, because you also had a kid in the bus? Can we meet in a central place and drive over?’ That’s what we agreed.

I called my wife and told her I would be late. And as a by-the-way, I asked her: ‘Have you talked to your girl for the day?’ No, she said. And I left it at that. I was anxious at that point to handle this myself. I feared a panic. I didn’t want to go home and pick her up for us to go to the accident scene.

At around 7.15pm, John, his wife and I met in the Serena Hotel. I jumped into their vehicle and off we went. We reached Meru around 11 pm and the place was extremely chilly.

We stopped at a township before the junction to Isiolo for a quick meal. From the township to the hospital it was not a very long drive. Before we got to the hospital we learnt that the girls had been separated into two groups in two hospitals and we were in a dilemma where to go to. We also learnt that Jade, Kagagi’s daughter, was not badly injured and those like her were at Kaaga Girls.

Now our next question was: ‘Where is this other girl, now that we already know where Jade is?’ After so much talking back and forth, we arrived at St Theresa’s Hospital – and from there, my life changed.

In the hospital

We were among the first group from Nairobi to arrive. I sensed that my friends were apprehensive about how I was going to react and John kept a sensitive one step behind me throughout.

I started asking: ‘Who is in charge, who has information, where are the kids’ and such basic questions. It turned out they had been moved to different wards depending on the nature of the injuries. I went to the reception and introduced myself and said that I was looking for my daughter.

‘Who is your daughter?’ I said: ‘My daughter is Diana.’ We went somewhere and it turned out that the Diana they showed me was not my Diana. I tried to explain to them my daughter’s features but it was a very busy night for them and they were overwhelmed. Nobody was able to attend to me for long.

I moved from place to place and then I came across a dress at one doorstep. I told a nurse: ‘I need to see the girl who was wearing this dress. This is my daughter’s dress. And that sock I am seeing there is hers.’

I held onto one of the Sisters and told her that I had to see that girl. That’s when they took me around to check. It was a horrible scene. The girls’ faces were badly swollen and they had severe bruises all over.

I went round and round looking under the blankets, being told: ‘There is a girl here, there is another one there, and there...’ They all looked more or less the same and they were all in great pain. I looked at close to 20 kids but I couldn’t find my daughter.

So I went back again to the reception and said: ‘No, no, she’s not here and she’s not the Diana you had showed me’. In between I kept on talking to my friend Kagagi. ‘Hey,’ I asked him, ‘did Jade happen to see where her friend is by any chance?’

At the reception, I engaged the attendant for a while. Then eventually one of the Sisters said: ‘There’s one girl that we could not identify.’

And then I asked: ‘Why couldn’t you identify her and yet there are five to 10 other girls who are okay?’ The nurse told me that the girl had had a very bad accident and: ‘We took her last to the theatre.’

And I asked her: ‘Why didn’t you take the girl with the worst injuries to the theatre? I thought she should have been the first?’ The answers were not very clear and I was becoming impatient. I got the feeling that the girl’s condition was hopeless and that the doctors had decided to save those they believed stood a chance to be saved rather than expend effort on those who were gone.

This, of course, makes sense but to a parent it does not. So I said: ‘I want to see the two girls who have not been identified’. They took me to the theatre. But just as we got there, I saw a body on the bed at the entrance.

‘This is my girl,’ I said. The light at that point was not very bright and the girl’s body was badly swollen and bandaged heavily. It was not possible to identify her by looking at her head. I looked at her legs and I said I think it is her. One of her feet did not have socks.

I called her mother and said: ‘I am in the hospital and can you please tell me the socks that Diana had put on?’ I didn’t tell her that I was identifying a body. But she had already heard of the accident. She tried to stay calm but well...you know, it was getting clearer now. Straightaway, I took my girl’s hand. It was cold, very cold. I immediately requested for extra blankets.

I also asked for a heater which was brought. I asked for the body to be moved to a warmer room. Oh, it was tough, very tough. But from the moment I identified her, I tried to communicate with her although there was no sound coming out of her. But as I held her hand, I could feel the faintest pulse.

My first instinct was to warm the body first to get some blood circulation. Second, was to keep the girl slightly attentive. And the only way I knew how was to keep on touching her – I was touching her throughout that time – and talking to her.

I kept telling her: “Mummy, can hear me? It’s Daddy; can you flex your fingers to show that you can hear me?’ At first, I got a few faint responses; I could pick that she was hearing me. It took time -- even if it was twitch in the leg -- but that kept me going, telling me that she’s still alive.

I kept on holding her hand and praying, throughout the night. I wanted to know whether her senses were okay or not. I believe she heard me and this gave her an extra effort and belief that ‘there’s still life in me.’

Whether consciously or subconsciously, that gave her some fighting spirit that: ‘I believe in this guy, I believe in my dad.’ She’s a real fighter, she’s not a person to give up easily and my voice must have been a tremendous source of encouragement and as time went on I could feel and see more reflexes.

There are those things that you do out of intuition. You don’t think much. You do it believing that this is the best thing you can do at this particular time. And I must have influenced a trainee nurse. I seemed to have put into her more faith that this girl could come to quickly. I could see she was also trying to touch and talk to my girl.

But at the same time, we did not want to talk too much because she was going to tire up. In between I had quite a number of things to do. My head was moving from one issue to another. I got myself a charger for my phone and re-charged it and then I kept talking to my insurance people.

I was pressing them to send a chopper. The person who was on night duty told me that he did not have the authority to authorize a chopper. Other parents were also making arrangements for planes to airlift their children to Nairobi.

There was much to and fro between the insurance people and me which didn’t make sense to me at all. I was insured; they had my details, what exactly was the problem?

I found out later, after comparing notes with other parents, that none of the insurance companies was coming out clearly to say that: ‘You know what, if we can get bigger numbers the better, because the cost will come down.’ So we kept calling but for the insurers, it was like: ‘We wish we can get more numbers.’

Unfortunately, they never said so clearly because if they had, we could have sat together as parents of the girls who had suffered the most grievous injuries and made a decision.

But I also came to learn later that there was another issue on top of this one. The weather was bad and nobody would actually have flown at that time – but they were not telling us!

They were buying time: ‘We are consulting headquarters; we shall get back to you.’ But what they were actually doing is running the clock. I wish somebody had just said: ‘Look here, the weather is bad and we do not have a captain who feels competent enough to move into that area because it is hilly and it needs somebody who knows it especially at night.’

At around 5am, they called to say that a plane was on its way and it could take four or five girls. They asked that they be moved to the airstrip to await the plane’s arrival. The airstrip was quite some distance away. But I had made a decision my girl was not going to be flown to Nairobi.

There was a fleet of new Red Cross ambulances standing by and I said: ‘It is going to take me two hours to get to Nairobi, but that is the way I’ll go.’

Earlier at around 2am, I had sat down with a nurse. I asked what had happened and what Diana’s situation was.

That’s when the nurse told me quite clearly that Diana had had a very bad head injury; they were not sure what to do with her. They were actually 50-50 as to whether she would make it.

I think what worried them most was that there was a crack in the skull and a piece of it had actually fallen off. The brain was exposed. But God was with her. It was a miracle. The jaw was pierced by a piece of glass from one side of the mouth to the other but luckily, it didn’t touch the eye.

The interesting thing is this: Diana likes helping people. When the accident happened, I am told, she’s one of the girls who helped to remove the others from the wreckage unaware of how seriously injured she was. And in between she just collapsed.
The journey back to Nairobi

We were the first ambulance to Nairobi. Diana was in a critical condition and was given priority.

Thika Super Highway was not fully operational at that time. But because it was like 10 or so ambulances with sirens on the journey was smooth. Nevertheless, I saw some rogue drivers who decided to wedge themselves between the ambulances and race them.

It was their way of gaining advantage over other motorists. I found that reckless and uncouth. I couldn’t believe it but those are some of our drivers for you.

At Nairobi Hospital

Diana stayed at Nairobi Hospital for two months. It was a long, long wait. It was tough. To date, we have done seven surgeries on her head with the last one being three weeks ago.

At one point we had to replace the plate that was in the skull meaning they had to open the skull and close it again. But as much as we have done the head surgeries, there is still her left arm to go because it was also badly injured. The muscles between her elbow and shoulder were ripped off. We felt as a family that naturally, the head injuries should take priority.

And Dr Eric Kahugo, the maxillofacial surgeon who has been treating most of the Msongari accident girls, devised a plan for us. For a moment let me talk about him because I know this is a shared opinion with other parents: we can’t pay him for what he has done; he has gone out of his own comfortable environment to make sure the kids are in a better state, along with others, of course.

Life since the accident

It’s been tough, very tough. The first two months, I literary slept in the hospital. Everything else had to take a back seat. We also had to struggle to make sure that we get money from our insurance companies.

Bills were running close to Sh2 million per kid. My bill has surpassed Sh3 million, going to four. I am not sure that if my employer didn’t have an insurance package, if Loreto Alumni did not come together and raise funds to sort out this problem as one, this story would have been so different.

On resumption of school, Diana said there was no way she was going to board the school bus, so it became my duty to drive her to and from school. We also had to forego any trip outside Nairobi, including going to see her granny. I also couldn’t be too far from her; I had to hang around just in case there was need to rush her to hospital.

Socially, she has clang on to the tight network the survivors of the accident. She has become an introvert – you know, with the scars and being a girl, she felt she looked different and didn’t want people constantly asking her about it and pitying her.

The commitment to that sisterhood has also come with its demands – money for their lunches and dinners. You value that support link and don’t want to cut it.

But she is an incredibly strong girl and she is doing well. As we talk, she has gone for job placement at a firm of architects. She said she wanted to be either an aeronautical engineer or an architect.

Flashback

The accident happened during the second term so she missed two terms. But she did her exams and passed. That was utterly remarkable. She was back in Msongari for Form One and Two. Then we moved her to Oshwal Academy where she is now in Year 9.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the aftermath of that accident is something that we are going to manage for life.”

Last weel the saturday Nation spoke to the doctor and nurses at the hospital.

Dr Stephen Ngeera, then the Provincial Director of Health, did most of the surgery on the night of the accident. He said:

“Although I was familiar with accident trauma victims, I had not seen injuries as severe and so widespread amongst young children who were at the age of 12, 13 or 14. As medical personnel, it was a very painful experience for us,”
The hospital administartor, Sister Mary Agnes Nkatha, decried the high incidence of road accident.

“We have decided to upgrade the training of our staff in disaster preparedness and management. This road will always be there and we, therefore, must prepare for greater traffic and possibly a heavier intake of accident trauma patients.
Sister Agnes Mukulu was the nurse on duty that night sister on duty.

“I received the injured children. The first one was brought by a priest who was in a state of shock. The girl had lost both her arms. He kept saying, ‘Sister, a bad accident!’ I asked him: ‘Are there other kids?’ He replied: ‘I don’t know anything! Don’t ask me!’

There was this girl, her name was Diana; her head injuries were so severe nobody thought she could make it. The most crushing sight was watching badly injured children crying in pity for those who had lost their limbs. It was a nightmarish sight.

I have one request for you: could you please arrange for me to meet those girls again? I want to see them. They are part of us.

(Roy Gachuhi, a former Nation Media Group reporter, writes for The Content House. [email protected])