BEFORE I LEAVE

I wrote this piece while i was still on the hospital bed

BEFORE I LEAVE.

 

This day, 30^th January 2015…is a day to remember.

This feeling is erupting and leaving my emotions demolished by this peculiar feeling that am about to die.

It is not my wish to die but I’m writing this coz I can see my light candle becoming dimmer and dimmer about to go off but I still ask myself am I dying today?

It all started when I woke up at exactly 9.34am and was feeling so dizzy but I said to myself ‘Come on Mike it’s just a normal thing push on the wheel’. I was feeling a bit hungry so I rose up energetically and warmed hot water ready for my breakfast. That moment I was alone in the room coz my roommates had gone home due to the sudden short break which was a brief defoliated notice issued by the Hall’s office but as to me ‘stubborn minded man’ I decided to stay behind until the rock hits the wall then that will be the moment I will depart from this school. I had none intentions in mind either to reach home or camping at a relative’s palace because my home is far from school more than a thousand miles if am not wrong though am poor in mathematics actually I hated calculations when it comes to examinations but when it is on finance issues am always on top and on point like a decimal, no one would ever play with my cash while am still broke.(that is a story for another day if I will still fight this race while am on this hospital bed an God willing I will survive).

On this day I was much motivated, innovated enough to calibrate my craving for the breakfast. I left the room and went to the shopping centre about meters away from my room.

I used to find it hard to buy and cook meat but today I wanted a change nevertheless I had some cash so I did buy, I quote anonymous saying ‘money is not a problem, the problem is used’

Then I returned to my room, took my hot water but I find it hard to conclude that the amount of sugar I kept was too much that it conglomerated to this situation am in or it is something else, the problem is am not a qualified scientist neither am I a highly respected graduated physician to speak out my results.

After finishing my breakfast around 10.30am there I started preparing for the ingredients which would make my lunch be more delicious, delicacy was and is and will always be  my taste thus I had in mind that am the best cook ever even though I have never stepped in a competition with best cooks even in our village. That’s why Lupita Nyong’o speculated that ‘my (her) dreams are valid’.

I always operate on the basis of hurry hurry has no blessing thus am this slow oriented person but also having in mind that time is money and the time wasted cannot be recovered. I hereby leave my room heading to the kitchen, found most of the cooking coils empty so I snapped my finger, produced slightly joyful wink on my right eye then generated a freshly yellow banana smile which left each and every fellow ‘cooks’ perplexed if not mesmerized.

 

 

 

Yeah the part I waited mostly was the mixing the ingredients while I was cooking. Most of the people around were jus ‘nose wide open’ (I don’t know if its grammar) but all I could feel and see was that they were grasping the entire sweet aroma being formulated by my cooking pan. I am not bragging neither I’m I balling but I know am good at cooking sweet food even though many people do not know that. Call me braggart I won’t mind.

The food I cooked was so sweet that even I fear mentioning it because some of the readers who will read this would try to compete me but do I say? I will still remain the top most cook even though there is no judge to drop his or her fateful castigating judgments.

There I was, back to my room, the sweet aroma had hijacked the atmosphere of the room leaving the sensory part of smelling being nose-napped rather than being kid-napped.

With all the temptations I had to taste it, and that was the moment I decided to take my lunch and the solo saying goes ‘my house my rule’ I always take keen on these nutty gritty info which by pass my mind while am at a stake position, point when you think of nothing just fixed, glue minded like a hundred year old statue.

All of a sudden something knocked my head, I don’t really know what it was but I felt nothing at all (so complicated indeed). That was around 12.09pm when I sat at the table, finishing typing my 9^th poem then my head started behaving weirdly, putting me in circles ,round and round feeling dizzy and at the same time pain piercing like a hot needle entering a wet toe (try to imagine the pain)

I still had the same warrior-like spirit which I said to myself ‘Come on Mike it’s just a normal thing push on the wheel’ so I continued doing what I was doing.

But in less than three minutes the pain persisted this time it was so painful like a mother having labor (I heard that it is always more painful than one can imagine). With this, I rushed to the washroom, opened a tap and washed my head plus my face which by now, I was closing eyes tightly as if I had tasted a spoon-full of pepper soup.

I returned to my bed, wanted to take a nap but the strength I had was diminishing at a faster rate so I did what was best for me, grabbed my bag with some documents and went to student centre where I found William Lubwayo, my former schoolmate, who did the best favor anyone can do to a sick person, he called a Taxi man, who with no hesitation he appeared with the car and he drove me directly to the school’s hospital. Thanks to William, I owe him one.

Now matters came to matter, the big deal was here, walking from the car to the entrance of the hospital. I remember the driver asking, ‘Are you okay walking or I can take you?’ but hiding all the pain and pretending to be more active I replied gently like a gentleman ‘No am okay I can find my way, thank you’.

The moment I stepped out of the car, I saw the earth rounding upside down rather than going clockwise or anti-clockwise (am not a geography taker so I know nothing there). I struggled enough like an ant inside a wood, utilizing all the extra energy I had because I was seeing the clouds scattering as if I was going to die any sooner from that moment.

 

 

 

I entered the hospital ,at the reception I found people seated but I never knew any of them, suddenly my energy level went low, like a switch turned off, I had to seat vigorously at the bench, like a thud, obeying the law of gravity and I slept for seconds then I felt the pain one more time, at this moment I was seating next to a female student, who kindly helped me with the documents needed by the nurse, who reach out for my file and issued it to me at a speed of the second hand of a clock to rotate from 12 to 12,I was escorted to the doctor, breaking the rule of first come first serve, I entered the doctor’s office like a drunkard from a long night beer party moment.

In the doctor’s office I saw wonders and mighty wonders, initially I wanted to become a doctor when I grow up but due to my hate of hospitals and the fear of seeing a patient die in my arms I changed my mind abruptly but here I am in front of the doctor’s desk, he was looking at me in all angles as if I had a skeleton-looking face or a hungry male monkey face or even a scouting lizard generated from my face.

His words knocked my ears with shock and I felt like shouting ‘stop asking questions just give me the medicine I need’ but coming to my general senses I knew that I had not yet undergone even a single test. He asked me what was the problem, I did not respond, and then he talked like a modern person who is into digital error saying ‘Mwanaume ni kujikaza na kuongea’ meaning a man is to have courage and stomach the pain and then speak. But to me I replied slowly swallowing my words ‘Mwanaume ni kusema ukweli, naumia baana’ meaning a man is to speak the truth, I am suffering. But due to the respect I have, thanks to my mother who taught me much speaking etiquette (That is a story of another day).

The doctor asked me what the matter was, I replied headache. Then he asked for other symptoms but I said none, he asked if I had something else weird then I responded none again.

He flipped a certain file, wrote some things which I wonder how the next nurse read because they were neither human readable writings nor computer readable.

He directed me to the next office, for injection, this is the venue, the part, the scene which I hated most. I hate needles. I hate a female nurse requesting gently to open my pants so that she injects me. The injection was so hurting but I smiled, as they say that being a man, do not show the pain, swallow your tears.

After the injection, she expected the headache to stop but I wonder am I resistance to the medicine? It persisted on and on, while I was sleeping at the injection bed, I felt tears rolling down my chin. After few minutes, I never took count, another nurse came with too many medical instruments, and he took my sample of blood and went to the laboratory.

The pain was supposed to stop after the injection but it was vice versa so I had to be admitted and spend my time on the hospital bed. It was my first time to sleep in hospital and due to my phobia I let go the fear and showed a green light and spoke to myself ‘let it go’.

On the bed, that was the moment I saw my life hit a red-light light which was the stop sign to my life, life full of happiness and also sadness, life which had not yet tasted the other side of pleasure (adults understand what I mean) , the life which was full of questions initially people knew me as an anti-social person but I flipped the cards with much enthusiasm that I have become a socialite(not yet full) who holds a long list of friends and I still add people on the list day by day.

That’s my hobby, making new friends but not only new friends, I try my best to socialize with new, productive and mature friends, time is on the run so why act childish and you are in an adult move, like a big cat pretending to be a lion, that won’t happen.

Having many friends is not a pure total benefit but it is also a sacrifice, a task which needs proper energy, like doing a labor work with no salary, like farming on a sandy beach. You will just enjoy being with them but when a problem erupts, that is the moment you will realize that every man with his own cross.

As I started the process of socializing, I used to face face-book more than books faced me hoping to book face the faces, I updated my status four hundred and twenty spaces to prove that I was still breathing, failure to do so, my whole world would have changed upside down. I had a thousand friends online but only five I could count in my real life, so why spend more with people who just like, its true am an  armature so I upload my smile profile is fifty percent genuine and fifty percent genuine HD.

Back to the hospital, that Friday night I was injected with a medicine which was supposed to make me dose off. Believe it or not, I did not sleep from that 7pm until 6am in the morning, it is as if I was in a trans-night mission or I was in a rave or as if I had late night prayers.

So in the morning, a third different doctor came, and he said that I was well. I had to tell him how I was feeling then all of a sudden he told the nurse that they had to take another sample of blood to go for the last test. Initially I was happy that am being discharged from the hospital but moods changed when I saw the syringe, suddenly it was in my left arm.

The nurse asked me a certain question which left me perplexed and at the same time   speechless. She asked, ‘Do you…’ (I find it hard to share it out)

My eyes popped out as if I was chocked by something. It took around ten seconds to extract blood from my thick skin which was now numb, it reminded me in a certain morning where we as boys had to be taken to a certain river, water so cold, washed ourselves and getting ready to graduate to a higher level, that’s the adulthood, that is all about circumcision in a certain community in Africa.

But thanks be to the Lord I did not die.

I counted my blessings one by one and i remember a certain blessing which speculated that I will die old. Amen to that.

However I still have some questions…

1.      What if I had died before finishing this piece?

2.      Who would be the first person to read it?

3.      Who would you blame for my death?

4.      How would those people who promised to come and visit me, but failed, feel when they here that I died late in the night?

5.      How would my spirit feel leaving my body at the hospital bed?

 

Lastly, I say to you, in a society of genuine and suspicious characters holding inconspicuous emotions, just try to be the outcast before you are cast out of the society.

Special thanks to those who cared for me. God bless you.

                  ©Moka George Mike