Mother’s agony after operation goes awry

She was born a bouncing baby girl, the only child to the family of Mrs Dorcas Waithera.

The beacon of hope to the family is fading, regressing into pain and agony for her mother as a doctors’ hand aimed to correct a simple tonsil ailment turned the life of five-year-old Gladwell Wangeci to misery. Today, her leg is threatened with amputation.

It is a case of another doctor’s fault and negligence, but worse the hospital has deserted the family and no one wants to take responsibility.

Speaking to The Standard, Waithera said they took their daughter to Nazareth Hospital after she developed tonsils. On screening the tonsils, Waithera said doctors recommended they admit the girl so that a tonsillectomy –surgery to remove tonsils — can be performed.

In bandages

“We admitted her on November 25 and the following day the surgery was done. When she came out of the theatre, her left leg was wrapped in bandages,” she says.

Waithera claims the four-hour stay in the theatre was unusual.

Waithera says their efforts to seek an explanation have earned them ridicule from hospital attendants.

” Last week, when I went there, the matron told me that I should count myself lucky for having my daughter alive. They even chased us from the hospital compound,” says Waithera.

Hospital authorities who talked to The Standard on the telephone denied the claims , but no one was willing to give details of how a tonsil surgery caused the injury to the leg.

The head of paediatrics in the hospital, Mrs Doreen Mutiga, kept referring us to the ward matron.

“I can’t talk or even comment on anything, you better talk to the matron, she is better placed to explain it to you,” she said.

However, our efforts to reach the matron were futile as the telephone operator said she was not in office.

“The matron is at a hospital function and I doubt if she will be coming out anytime soon, I am sorry I can’t give you her mobile telephone number,” the operator said and hung up.

Source: East African Standard

Of babas and mamas

Women are no longer the only pieces of meat. Men have joined the fray. They are buckling under a barrage of cat-calls and back-side grabbing from the fairer sex.

Though many men argue that it is not as unpleasant as women say it is, I think they are just blowing hot air.

It all started long long ago when Mama Nani was washing clothes. Her husband told her that the elders had decided it was time he got another wife, now that it looked like Mama Nani could not give birth to boys.

Being an elder himself, Mama Nani’s husband knew his marriage to a beautiful little girl would cost him nothing more than a few goats, a wife who would grow into a lovely spouse envied by the village, and a negligible spat of gossip spawned by his faithful wife.

Unbeknownst to Baba Nani with a new young wife, this gossip spread though the entire village, blazed through the country and jumped onto a ship that later docked in Mama Huyo’s country. Mama Huyo saw the same thing happening all around her. She had been told that her new co-wife was necessary to keep peace in the region, and later that the wealth must stay in the family!

Several centuries later, word on the street was that the mamas were inferior to the babas and were being treated horribly as such. And though the subject of little girls had been dealt with because of strange emerging illnesses and parents’ determination to keep their children innocent, those old enough would usually have their genetic weakness taken advantage of.

So, a group of mamas came together and went to Beijing to join groups from other countries to demand protection from the law. Though the underlying cause was noble, Madame Baby heard about it in the news and decided that she could afford to be less careful about the ‘dance classes’ she was sharing with the Jamaa in Plot 10.

And it has gone on since. There is now very little respect between mama and baba. They have all sorts of reasons for everything they want to do. Recently Baba Dennis was not feeling well and Mama Milka had to take him home…

Methinks that as babas begin to try and show mamas that they actually will respect them and treat them well – a bigger more intricate wheel is about to start turning.

Source: Laura Walubengo

Capital FM

How can we pay off people who grabbed public land?

By Macharia Gaitho

A GOVERNMENT OF THIEVES, by thieves, for thieves: I was persuaded that is the unique Kenyan definition of the State on hearing about plans to spend billions from my pocket, and the pockets of other long-suffering taxpayers, to pay off those who looted and destroyed the Mau Forest.

The wealthy and powerful are rewarded for their crimes, while the weak and helpless are left to starve or sent to jail for small transgressions.

To those who have, more will be added: It is like we have turned on its head the biblical adage, so that instead of rewarding those who work hard and increase the national wealth, we reward those who specialise in increasing their personal wealth by stealing from the common pot.

Robin Hood, in reverse, stealing from the poor to give the rich.

The tragedy is that it is not just a small bunch of criminals behind these travesties, but the State, as an institution, that drives policies designed to multiply the fortunes of the haves while impoverishing the masses.

It is quite a while since I recalled the adage about one of those lawless, ex-Soviet kleptocracies described as a mafia with a country rather than merely a country with a mafia.

Kenya perfectly suits the bill. The mafia is not just the criminal gangs out there profiting from smuggling, extortion, murder and robbery while keeping a step ahead of the law. In Kenya the mafia runs the government.

That is why a small group of conspirators elected to serve the people can get together and plot how they can instead steal from the people.

When I first heard about the plan to pay the rich crooks who abused office to grab huge chunks of the Mau Forest for themselves, I almost threw up.

I just could not believe that we could be subject to such blatant displays of impunity.

I kept hoping against hope that it was all a big mistake; that an official statement would be speedily released disowning any such plans, attributing the reports, maybe, to misinformation by an individual Cabinet minister trying to pressure the government into paying his thieving friends.

The denial eventually coming from Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta and his Forestry counterpart Noah Wekesa was both belated and unconvincing.

And it should have indicated whether President Kibaki and Agriculture minister William Ruto denied having their own little agreement on the issue.

In the absence of a categorical statement, it appears the rationale is that there is a class of Mau Forest landowners who do have title deeds and therefore must be compensated.

THE LIST OF EXECUTIVE SQUATTERS includes ex-President Moi, his son Gideon, former State House Comptroller Franklin Bett (now a minister), former personal assistant Joshua Kulei, former Commissioner of Lands Sammy Mwaita and former PS for Internal Security Zakayo Cheruiyot (both now MPs) and former Co-operative Bank chairman and Baringo Kanu boss Hosea Kiplagat.

Should this lot be compensated, or be kicked out without ceremony and further charged with abuse of office? Should they be compensated or should they be invoiced for the damage caused to the Mau and the cost of rehabilitation?

The question we should be asking is not whether the Mau land-grabbers have title deeds, but whether those papers were legally and properly obtained.

Title deeds may, indeed, be sacrosanct, but are mere pieces of paper if obtained through corruption, fraud and abuse of office.

It should be clear, in any case, that where a public official misuses his office in pursuit of illegitimate personal profit, any related transactions are null and void.

What is being proposed is to reward looters and grabbers. It is like a gunman walking into the Central Bank and walking away with billions, and when caught, demanding to sell back the proceeds of the theft to the State.

It cannot be a legitimate government that gives in to such demands. Those striking the deals can only be pursuing personal profit, and should themselves be investigated.

Let us not be cheated that this is about humanitarian assistance to poor suffering evictees from the Mau or about just compensation for landless people who were allocated land in the area or innocent people who may have purchased from the original allottees.

This is about a bunch of powerful crooks who consider themselves entitled to loot, rob and steal because they are in government. Anyone involved in this crooked scheme must be forced to relinquish office.

mgaitho@nation.co.ke