ROAD CARNAGE: WHO IS LOOKING OUT FOR THE MOURNING?

December 2017 is turning black at an alarming rate. The road carnage that has been witnessed the last two weeks should be frightening to say the least. The number of lives lost in such a short period of time is not acceptable.

As we count the death toll and shake our heads, we hardly ever appreciate the true ramifications of the devastation meted out on the survivors of such tragedies and their loved ones. This year, several events were held to raise awareness about road safety. The picture remained the same, survivors of road carnage horrors on wheelchairs or on crutches being the visual representation of the pain of those who escape with their lives.

Today let us a take a look at the scenes beyond the physical devastation of road traffic accidents. In the last week, an excruciatingly painful message has been doing the rounds on social media; a post from a gentleman named George Fortune Oguso who talks about losing his entire family in the Sachangwan road tragedy ten days ago. He lost his wife, children, sister, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephews in one fell swoop.

Reading the facebook post left me numb. I do not know George but his post loudly communicated that his heart had frozen over. It was devoid of emotion. George may be walking, talking and typing on his phone but he is in a deep emotional mental coma despite how he may appear to those around him.

I was mentally transported to many years back, sitting around reading a newspaper article about another young gentleman in George’s predicament. It had taken two years to be able to talk about his tragedy. In a road accident, he had lost his entire family, his wife and three children, and survived without a scratch. I sat bolt upright when I realized he was talking about people very well known to me. Despite being out of touch for a number of years, I had known his wife and first born son well and I was knowing about their deaths two years down the line.

By the time I was done reading the article, I had shed gallons of tears. The mental image that would never leave my head was when he described how his second born baby had been flung out of the car and when he found his body against a wall on the roadside, he scooped him up and held him tightly in his arm in a vice-like grip all the way to the hospital begging everyone to save his son’s life. He totally refused to hear them when they said the baby was already gone. He wouldn’t let go of him.

I remember his wife Linda, a jolly young lady full of life, never a dull moment around her. Being a bit older than myself, she was my insight into what university life looked like. She finished campus, settled down and married her university sweetheart and just as they were starting to raise a family, their idyllic life went bust leaving a distraught widower who went crazy the first time he walked into their marital home and tripped over his son’s pram at the door.

To the rest of the world, the death anniversaries come and go and slowly fade out of our memories. To those left behind to bear the tragic loss of their loved ones, they are left in the deep black hole they were thrown into.  The emotional trauma experienced is just as bad as the physical injuries we see in the survivors of accidents. But nobody is paying attention. We go to funerals and bid the departed farewell, we condole with the families and pray for them but we do not comprehend what the future holds for them.

We are quick to calculate the losses only in terms of what we think the family loses fiscally when we talk about the orphaned, the widowed or the physically disabled. Everyone is quick to point out the impact of the loss of the family breadwinner, the children who will need school fees, the widow who has to raise children as a single parent or the survivor who must lose his livelihood because he has been confined to a wheelchair.

Who is addressing the mental and emotional trauma that has been occasioned by these tragedies? We may fix broken bones and rehabilitate spinal injuries. We may form support groups for our survivors and pay out hefty insurance claims to the affected. Who is dealing with what we cannot see?

In a world where we expect 25% of the population to be suffering from depression, what are we doing for the Georges of this country to prevent them from becoming the next suicide statistic? It cannot end at the funeral. What of those left disabled? It is not enough to focus on their physical disability only. Their emotional scars run way deeper. The horror of waking up from a six-week coma to find you lost your legs and half your face is not something you recover from.

Avoiding the home you and your wife raised your babies for two years is not mourning. It is a sign of depressive illness. When the house remains untouched and the wardrobes are still full of clothes; baby bottles gathering dust on the shelf and your sons’ bikes still in the garage; that’s a father walking around but long dead on the inside.

As we build the long overdue trauma centres in our hospitals, let us not forget the mental health units that must accompany them. This country does not have enough psychiatrists and counselling psychologists to handle the aftermath of the road carnage we are experiencing. Let us stand up for George and the loved ones that Linda and her children left behind. Forgetting about them is a sure way to increase the suicide rate in this country! In some parts of the world, these are the stories that breed serial killers who go on the rampage to seek retribution for their losses!