Facing Death Without Panic: The story of a Brave Ugandan Businessman

Three weeks ago, I had the unhappy opportunity of seeing a man die in manner that apparently demystified death. I have heard of many great men in the face of death and I have also watched movies of men so brave you would think they were aliens, but those are movies, not reality show cases!  In this case, which happened late last month, a young enterprising man plying his trade between Kampala and the Southern Sudanese city of Juba got involved in a bad road accident.

He was transporting four tones of bottled water to Southern Sudan on that fateful day when their heavy Truck loaded  beyond capacity, lost control and over-turned. The driver jumped off and left this poor man to fate. He also tried to jump off but the full wait of truck fell on his waist. The only part of his body that remained free of the full weight of the truck was his chest and head. He was literally swimming in his own pool of blood. It was this scenario coupled with his own mood that made me to define this guy as a brave man. He was calm and invited people to try to lift the truck but realized they were instead killing him because each time the truck was lifted a few inches manually by the sympathetic crowd, it would come back to his back with a thud, inflicting more damage to his back.

 Efforts to call the police to come along with some weight lifting equipment were fruit less. Quite aware that all options were not helping, the man thanked the crowd for trying to help him. He never cried and neither did he panic. He made one last request to a sympathizer for a cell phone and he was heard talking to his wife and his two children. He didn’t give any distress signals to his wife-but he talked for about 30 minutes, mainly on issues to do with his business and how she could manage it even when he is gone. He kissed his children good buy on phone and lay there motionless for four hours more hours before he died!

 Local villagers numbering 500 tried all they could to save the man’s life but failed. I know in a country like America, such a man of enterprise would have been rescued because apart from being a human being, he was a useful citizen and a taxpayer. May be some powerful weight lifting machines would have been called to do the needful. In the case Uganda, emergencies are never responded to robustly and such deaths that could have avoided keep killing our people.