headaches for Obote. It heralded more turbulence as Obote sought to consolidate his control and eliminate all possible threats to his presidency. On 30 April 1966 Obote announced a new Constitution which was passed without debate, and he was then promptly elected President under the new constitution.
President Milton Obote talking to Narendra Patel,
Speaker of the National Assembly. DS Archives
***
The operating rooms on the ground floor of Uganda’s largest and most prestigious hospital were abuzz with activity. Thursday was the main theatre day for Red Firm, and Dr. Sebastian Kyalwazi, who had returned from Britain a year earlier, had a long list of patients lined up for surgery. It was said that he had been among the top students in the exams that saw him becoming a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. For many of the junior staff that was wonderful news, but it came with a fair amount of confusion. Was he now to be treated the way they treated Prof. Ian McAdam? Was he going to have special theatre gowns with his name on them? Up until that time only the white doctors had personalized gowns. The easy bit was his joining the white doctors in the surgeons’ room, but these other privileges were still somewhat unclear. In that exclusive club Kyalwazi would soon be joined by another British trained Ugandan surgeon, Alexander Odonga.
In truth Kyalwazi and Odonga did not have to be as good as their British counterparts to attain membership to the Royal College of Surgeons. They had to be much better, in order to be considered as good. The door to the surgeons’ room was very narrow indeed for the so-called natives, and the Ugandans that got in during those early days were resilient and especially brilliant. The struggle for equal professional recognition went as far back as the late 1930s, in fact for as long as the Africans had a role in ‘modern’ medical care other than that of being the patient.
Kyalwazi pushed through the main double-door entrance to the theatre and made an immediate left turn into the surgeons’ changing room. Here the doctors would exchange their street clothes and clinical coats for special gowns, usually used only here. In a couple of minutes he had changed, and he exited the changing rooms directly into the main corridor within the theatre. There were six spacious operating rooms, each separated from the next by scrubbing bays, equipment storage, and trolley preparation space. Inside each theatre was a new operating table with special overhead lighting that incorporated a camera for televising operations. On one wall was a board on which the instrument nurse would record all the instruments on the trolley, and the number of mops and towels at the team’s disposal. At the end of each procedure the nurse would do a loud count to be sure that no instruments or swabs were left in the wound. On the other wall was an X-ray viewer that allowed the surgical team to display any X-ray films that might be needed for the procedure. All theatres were fitted with piped oxygen and suction facilities.
Kyalwazi checked the board in the surgeon’s room to confirm what theatre he had been assigned, and then made his way down to Theatre 2. The anesthetist was busy securing an intravenous line on the first patient. “Maama, wasuze bulungi?” he asked the patient. “How was your night?” He always made a point to talk to the patients before they were put to sleep.
***
Karungi’s earliest memory of Kweete was at a family gathering. It might have been a wedding or a funeral. They could not have been older than seven years. All the kids were running around, and Aunt Adrine reminded them repeatedly that Kweete was not to run too fast or she would end up in the hospital. Kweete looked just fine to the other kids and so the warning fell on deaf ears. In a sea of children of all ages, three little girls were inseparable: Karungi, Biitu, and Kweete. Like Kweete, Biitu’s full name was hardly remembered and rarely used. Few would have made the connection between it and the English royal name Beatrice. While Karungi and Kweete were first cousins, Biitu’s family was from a different clan, although their homesteads were only a stone’s throw apart. During the school holidays, Biitu would sometimes arrive at her friend’s home early enough for breakfast, and she might not return to her own home until after supper. The parents had long stopped the threats and beatings that they had used to try to keep her away from Kweete and Karungi, who Biitu called Rungi. The parents should not have worried though. The only mischief the girls ever got into, if it was that, was to climb every fruit tree on the property. Otherwise, they usually spent the days playing hide and seek, ‘kwepena’, marble games using riverbed stones, and hunting for guavas and other fruits. It was later, when the girls were nearly ten, that Kweete became critically ill, and had to spend nearly two months in hospital. The doctors determined that she had an infection involving the inner lining of her heart, on top of the asthma that had bothered her episodically since she was about four. Because she missed the most critical term of the school year, she had to redo the class, falling behind her peers by a whole year. For Karungi the following holiday was not much fun as Kweete could not climb trees, did not want to run around, and she absolutely could not play in the rain. These restrictions were to remain for the next several years. The following year Karungi’s parents sent her off to boarding school, so her contact with her two soul mates was further curtailed.
With Rungi gone to boarding school and Kweete not well enough to join her in their usual escapades, Biitu now had no choice but to take on the chores and tasks that her mother insisted were essential for every girl’s survival. She was taught how to peel matoke perfectly without looking, how to winnow and grind millet, and how to take care of little babies. Her mother told her this was the meaningful education, not the reading of books that had little to do with real life. Without Rungi and Kweete life was dull but not lacking in activity.
***
In the evening of 19 December 1969, Professor Ian McAdam, the Head of Department of Surgery, was just exiting the hospital when he heard on the car radio that President Obote had been shot at while leaving Lugogo sports stadium, where he had just closed the UPC annual delegates’ convention. Usually by this time McAdam would already be at the club, but on Fridays he sometimes did an evening round to especially make sure the post-operative patients were comfortable, and to preempt calls late in the night. As he swung his car into Kira Road to head towards Mulago roundabout and on to the doctors’ club, he saw a convoy speeding towards the hospital entrance from the opposite direction, sirens blaring. His sixth sense told him to turn around and head back into the hospital. By the time he made the full turn at the roundabout, the motorcade had disappeared into the hospital. He returned to the parking that he had just left on Level 3, and entered the hospital through the Casualty Department. The previously calm waiting area was busy. There were soldiers and police officers standing around, and although he had taken the precaution to put on his clinical coat, they would not let him take the lift. He walked straight through to the main staircase in the central block, and then ran up to the 6th floor, taking two steps at a time. As he came up to the landing he was met by the 6th floor Matron and two younger doctors.
“We have been trying to reach you”, the Matron said, visibly relieved to see him.
“I heard the news on the radio. I was just leaving so I turned and came back.”
“This way please. He is in Room 1.” Room 1 on Ward 6B was the top VIP room. The entire floor had been cordoned off, and for the duration of the President’s stay there were soldiers at the entrance, and the elevators were closely guarded.
Dr. Kyalwazi arrived shortly afterwards. The two surgeons reviewed the patient and ordered that he be taken to the theatre immediately. They then called Dr. Martin Aliker, the dental surgeon, to join them in theatre.
The stories from Lugogo were as varied and numerous as the people willing to tell them. Some said an assassin had taken a shot at the President as he emerged from the hall, but that the split second before he pulled the trigger, a super-alert
