A Visit to Mike-Nerico ( II )

I bade Mwangi goodbye and hurried out of our stores' office . ( Mwangi is my senior in stores and normally , when either of us went off-duty or on leave , the other party took charge of all the various types of stores . That is a mammoth task that usually sets one's nerves on edge , leaving him exhausted in every pore . )



I rushed back home to take my National Identity Card and Medical Insurance Card before calling a taxi . All the way home , my cell-phone rang incessantly but I ignored all the calls . News had fast done the rounds that Nerico was critically ill , so all that those callers  wanted was to just confirm it from me so they could farther spread the story with alittle more icing to suit the ears of their listeners .



Back home I found the entire family in tearful anticipation . All the children wanted to accompany me to Mumias to go see their ailing uncle . Mother wanted to give me some fruit to take to her invalid son but I brushed all that aside . No good burdening myself with stuff and things all the way from Kitale to Mumias , six hours away by car ; if need be , I'd buy the necessary stuff in Mumias .



I had to hurry because it was coming up to noon . In my haste , I forgot to carry several items of necessity like my mobile phone charger so in case the phone shut down due to lack of power , I'd lose all communication with both those at home and in Mumias .



Now there's this one annoyance that gets to me when I am in a hurry and yet fail to get things done right and fast enough . It got the better of me when I reached the bus-stage and found no vehicle in sight . The taxi-man I had earlier on called could not be reached by phone and the operator said the number was temporarily out of service ! Damn . I hailed the first motor-bike that appeared and off we raced towards Kitale .



Normally , I don't like riding motor-cycles due to the recklessness of the cyclists . They are notorious for breaking every traffic rule in the book . Several lives , not to mention limbs , have been needlessly lost as a result .



We zoomed and bumped our way along the pot-holed murram road , swaying , revving , swerving , honking , dodging , over-speeding , slowing , emergency-breaking and letting go with sickening jolts.....When we reached Kitale town I was as brown as the roads from head to toe . Alighting from the motor-bike , my limbs felt like I had ridden a wild-mule in a maize plantation . I limped on towards the Kitale-Bungoma bus-terminal .



Bungoma-bound shuttles were plenty and revving-up for take-off . The journey was uneventful with brief stop-overs at Kamukuywa , Kimilili and Chwele , for passengers to buy refreshments . I had no appetite for anything so I burrowed myself into social-networks and updated my friends and followers on the current turn of events .



I alighted at Bungoma with numb feet and had to sit for a while on a bench at the bus-stage before finally boarding a Mumias-bound shuttle .



My sister-in-law took my luggage to her house at Mayoni and , together , we took a cab to Shianda . Ahmadiyya Muslim Hospital is less than a kilometre from Shianda-market . I did not bother to take the pains and look around , as is always my case , to familiarize myself with my surroundings . My heart was in my mouth ; my brother's life hang in the balance . According to his wife , he had not stopped vomitting since he was admitted two days ago .



Four o'clock is the official visiting hour so we had no trouble with the stern gate-keeper who twirled the mean-looking baton in his hand , a no-none-sense look on his grizzled forehead ( although I didn't understand why he had to wear that look in such a place of suffering ).



Mike-Nerico struggled to sit up in bed upon seeing me but the female nurse attending to him put a restraining hand on his shoulder . Typical of Nerico , the only indication of his illness was the pint of drip suspended above his bed , which snaked down to a bandaged spot on his left wrist , and the profuse vomiting and sweating . Otherwise you'd swear he was alright . He offered a swollen arm for a handshake as I sat down upon his bed . When I asked about how he was feeling , he stared vacantly at me . It was then that it dawned on me that he had lost his hearing . Uncle explained that it was a side effect of quinine and that it would gradually wear-off . He went on to say that that day , Nerico was much better than the day before .



All day long and the next two days after that , I stayed by his side by day while his wife relieved me and stayed with him at night . He got better almost instantly on Sunday morning . When my cousin , Charles Wesonga , and I went to see him , he was sitting on the bed munching an orange . Great was our joy that Charles quoted from Joshua 1:9 , " I repeat , be strong and brave ! Don't be afraid and panic , for I the Lord your God , am with you in all you do ."



Nerico was discharged from hospital on Monday 19.08.2013 at noon .