“Get down, get down,” the driver of the Coaster van shouted as riots enveloped Seeta town on the afternoon of November 18, sparked off by the arrest of NUP presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine.
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The windscreen of the coaster had already been shattered by a stone thrown by a group of rioters so the driver was trying to keep his panic-stricken passengers from harm’s way.
He manoeuvred the van and parked at Kobil Petrol station.
Out of the shadows emerged a group of security operatives. Some were running up and down trying to pursue the rioters and bring calmness to the town. Others were removing the tyres and rocks placed in the middle of the road.
Then it started raining bullets.
Justine Namambo, one of the passengers in the van, started praying. Then she started groaning.
She had been hit by a stray bullet which went through her lower abdomen and lodged in the spinal cord.
“I don’t feel myself. I can’t feel my body,” she told a neighbour as paralysis set in.
Since she had misplaced her phone in the fracas, she gave the neighbour the contact of her her husband and told her to call him.
“Honey, I have been hit. I am bleeding. I am dying,” she said when she got through to her husband.
As her husband Andrew Hadali made his way to Seeta, other passengers tried to administer first aid and stop the bleeding.
A few minutes later, the husband, Hadali, arrived and Namambo was rushed to Namirembe Church of Uganda hospital in Mukono.
The doctors there tried to do everything. They reduced the bleeding and stabilised her. However, they later admitted that they could not do much. At 1.00 am, they recommended that she is taken to a bigger health facility like Mulago.
Hadali chose Nsambya hospital.
“At Nsambya we were told to first deposit Shs 300,000 before they could work on her. They also carried out other tests and X-rays. I had to add an additional Shs 500,000,” he told The Nile Post.
However in the morning of November 20, they were advised to take her to Mulago hospital given its range of facilities and specialists.
She was put in an ambulance and driven to Mulago, where the situation was chaotic.
Luckily for them, they managed to get the attention of the doctors given the precarious situation in which Namambo was.
Hadali said government should come to their rescue and meet their medical bills.
“Everyday I spend so much money to buy this and that. I am running out of money
Namambo is a mother of one although she takes care of her young siblings.
Her main worry is whether she will ever walk again let alone return to work along Nasser Road, where she was into the printing business.
For now, the Spinal Ward in Mulago hospital is her address.
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