Meet Michael

It is curious how a complete stranger can suddenly take centre stage in your life; the way in which someone you’ve never met before becomes one of the most important people you know. It’s been like that with Michael.

Maybe it was wishful thinking or just plain ignorance which made me think it wouldn’t take long to learn how to walk again. I had returned to Uganda with a sheet of ‘Foot and Ankle Exercises’ from the hospital. ‘Sitting Toe Raise’, Ankle Circles’, ‘Gastroc Stretch’ and ‘Standing Unilateral Heel Rise’ looked easy enough in theory although the sheet did lack any details about how often the exercises should be done.

But a week after taking the cast off my leg I still didn’t recognise the thing at the end of my body as my foot or ankle, and I could only lift the ball of my foot about a nanometre from the floor using the ‘Sitting Heel Raise’.

Progress was painfully slow, literally, and even new exercises from the internet, ‘Plantar Flexion’, ‘Dorsi Flexion’, ‘Inversion’ and ‘Eversion’ didn’t really improve things. What I needed, but had never been told I needed, was a physiotherapist. Enter Michael!

Physiotherapists are like gold dust in Uganda. We had been told there was a qualified ‘physio’ at Arua hospital, but couldn’t get hold of any reliable information about how to contact him. Just as we were resigning ourselves to another 500 km drive to Kampala to get treatment the Principal of the School of Nursing told us about Michael. Four hours later Michael appeared at our door.

He is the son of a Church Teacher, born and bred in West Nile and the same age as David Beckham but with his Achilles tendon still intact! Originally he wanted to train as a pharmacist, but was advised instead to train as a physiotherapist. He was told that as a physiotherapist he would never have to look for work – work would look for him. The advice, it seems, was spot-on. Now Michael works at Arua Hospital four days a week and is living in Ocoko, a village just a couple of kilometres from Kuluva. He rides a motorbike and has a car – so is doing quite well – and always turns up at the right time looking very professional.

Michael is unfailingly cheerful with a very positive outlook. Nevertheless he said that because of my age(!) it would take longer for me to walk properly than a younger patient! So saying, he went to work on my ankle. Each day since then he has come to apply hot compresses to my foot and ankle. He has massaged and manipulated, pushed and pulled, and entered into various competitions with my ankle.... ...I even understand the exercises now.

Last Sunday Michael told me it would probably take another 3 weeks before I could walk without crutches, but yesterday, Friday, less than a week after I first met him, I confounded the prognosis. For the first time in ten weeks I was able to walk without crutches. Michael is delighted at the progress and I am delighted with him. If we hadn’t met him, Anne and I would have been going to Kampala this weekend.

This week Michael has taken centre stage in our life here and Uganda has done it again. A doctor in Kampala performs an operation on my leg 10 minutes after first seeing me, I am treated royally at Entebbe airport (unlike Heathrow), the car gets repaired within 48 hours of being crashed into by a coach, and now successful physiotherapy at home within 4 hours of learning about it. Beat that!

Return to Kuluva - Tyreless Exploits

On Saturday morning we were reunited with our own ‘wheels’, and soon after lunch were able to set off for Kampala where we were going to stay with some friends over the weekend. Nursing a painful ankle over and around the potholes of Kampala is not an experience I would recommend, but after an hour or so we arrived at Matthew and Anna’s home conveniently located near the road which takes us north, back to Kuluva. The only problem with the apartment is that it is located on the second floor. Normally this would be no problem, but 50+ steps on crutches with one leg is not easy!

Sunday and Monday enabled Anne to get some essential bits of business done in Kampala – like taking the car to the mechanic, and buying essential supplies. But 6.30 Tuesday morning and we were up and ready to go on the final leg of our journey home.

The traffic leaving Kampala was fine. We were soon out of the city and on the open road. When we arrived in Uganda 2½ years ago, the first 200km of the road to Arua were truly dreadful. Quite literally there were more potholes than road. Added to this was the periodic hazard of coaches on the Kampala-Arua route. From time to time you would hear the dreadful blast of a horn and see a white monster closing on you at sometimes terrifying speeds, careering all over the road to avoid the potholes. All you could do was to get out of the way, usually by heading for the nearest ditch.

Now, the road is much improved having gone through a wholesale repair programme. Sometimes this has meant that the road had periodic batches of up to 300 speed humps to slow traffic down around the road works. But on this journey, for the very first time, all repairs were complete – no potholes or road humps – and we were able to make good time. Now we can average speeds which compete with the bus services and we are rarely, if ever, overtaken.

The middle part of the journey takes us on a road which borders Murchison Game Park. It’s a long and straight and feels as though it’s on top of the world. It is one of the few places on the journey which has no phone signal. Anne was driving, and we were pleased with the progress we were making when quite suddenly there was a worrying noise and the road suddenly felt very bumpy. Anne slowed down and I looked out of the passenger wing mirror to see bits of tyre flapping around the rear nearside wheel. A tyre had burst.

Anne has never changed a wheel before, and I have never attempted to do such a thing in a plaster-cast with a swollen and painful ankle. But there was no phone signal, and none of the few vehicles which passed (perhaps one every 6-7 minutes) stopped when we tried to flag them down. There was only one solution and the next half hour or so was spent with a one legged-man on crutches and his wife, somehow, jacking up the car and manipulating what are very heavy Land Cruiser wheels until we had managed to change the wheel.

But we were blessed. There was some cloud cover so it wasn’t blazingly hot, neither did it rain. Another blessing, no wild animals, which you sometimes see on the road, came to bother us!

We finally arrived home after a journey of some 7 hours to be greeted by Lucy and the women who work in the houses around our own. Anne and I collapsed onto the bed with a deep sense of thankful relief.

P.S. Just a week later, and as we were turning right into Kuluva hospital, one of the monster buses which ply their trade between Arua and Kampala decided it wanted to overtake us. It was a miracle that we weren’t killed, but the coach driver managed to divert down the same road we were turning into, and just damaged the front offside wing and bumper. Nobody was hurt, but the exchanges between the driver, the bus passengers, and ourselves were not much fun. But God provided us with some good friends who appeared, and after some time and the involvement of the police,the bus company agreed liability and paid for our repairs.

We are looking forward to a healed ankle and a much quieter life if possible.........