Agwor'ọha! I first heard the name and it's story when mama Okenwa had a serious complication from pregnancy and her womb was damaged and she was dying.
I remember vividly how she bled and bled till her eyes turned white, like paper. I remember her children crying, running to our side of the face-me-I-face you, calling on papa, "papa! our mother is dying. Please help her!"
Papa sprang into action, like he was known to do. He ran to mama okenwa's room and grabbed her, calling for help in the process, and within minutes, the compound was full of people ready to save one of their own, for those days in the public yard, we lived like family.
But getting people to help was easy.
What was difficult was deciding which hospital to go to in the rural farming community where we lived. It was almost a ghost town because herdsmen violence was starting at the time. There were no hospitals in sight with a surgeon that was capable of saving the woman.
Yet, papa and everyone tried their best. They loaded Mama Okenwa on papa’s Suzuki motorcycle and he sped off. To stem the bleeding, the women of the yard stuffed wrappers and pads between mama Okenwa's thighs. I could only watch in confusion, dazed as I was by the blood.
The first clinic they got to had no doctor. The second had none and likewise, the third. And these hospitals were all separated by what papa would tell me later were hundreds miles, a system of measuring distance between places.
In the end, according to papa, they could only end up in a town called Ukehe where they were told a powerful surgeon who had returned from Germany lived. His name was Agwor'ọha, the healer of the people. Papa said it was luck that led them to the town.
He said he was surprised at first as per what was such a qualified doctor doing in his home town, when he could have a far richer life in the cities. But then when he heard the surgeon's story, he understood.
Papa was so concerned when he told me the story. This doctor had been trained by the mission of that town when he had no one to help him. He finished medical school and went abroad. He lived there for years until he read about the mission hospital which had trained him, how dilapidated it had become, how badly they needed help, and how people died for simple cases he could solve.
And so, began his journey home. An orphan boy who had no one to feed him except the mission. He decided to make the sacrifice and headed home to help the mission.
"everyone thought he was mad," papa said. "What stupidity could do such a thing to a man?"
I listened quietly, surprised that papa did not see, could not see how much truth there was in the opinion of these people who saw the 'madness' in the decision of this doctor.
I told papa that I would never leave abroad for a place like the place we lived, like the big doctor's home town, a town without running water and reliable electricity.
I held my views even when papa told a glorious tale of how Agwor'ọha had saved mama Okenwa who was like a mother to me. "It still doesn't matter," I insisted. "He's wasting his life."
But then, what did I know then? A boy who didn't understand what true fulfilment and happiness meant, what sacrifice meant, how personal ideals led people, people like Agowr'oha who had seen everything there was to see in life.
I still wanted to be a doctor but I was never going to do what this old surgeon had done. Even the changes of the years with the constant drifts between the rains and the hamatttern would not change my mind.
Until I too fell sick when I was in the university and was dying because no doctor could tell what was wrong with me. They prescribed drugs upon drugs until the tablets were nearly killing me. Then enter the great man, Agwor'ọha.
I remember the day I met him. I had given up hope when papa went to him and pleaded for him to see me. He was such a busy doctor then and ran the mission hospital all alone. In addition to healing, he also trained the other doctors in the town on how to perform surgeries.
So I was really privileged to have met him. I remember my body having goose bumps when I saw him in his gray hair and deep lenses and heard his English that sounded like flowers. I stood up and greeted him. I was star struck in a way I couldn't understand considering my disapproval of his austerity.
He was shocked when he saw me. He said, "you're lucky son. You've nearly lost your virility as a man but now, it won't happen because you've come to the right place." He smiled. "We shall heal you."
And so, I was healed.
I was recovering from the drugs when papa came and held my hands and we talked and I told him that we would have to really thank the doctor in a big way.
Papa concurred and then smiled. "Do you still think he is crazy to stay here in his homeland to help people like you? Do you still think his critics are right?" he asked.
Papa waited for me to open my eyes and shake my head then he said, "you might not be as brave or you might not approve the 'crazy' actions of heroes but what you should not do is discourage them for laying down their lives for others."
***
This is a true life story concealed in fiction, a story about Dr Nnabueze, and one dedicated to all the other doctors who saved Nsukka and environs. Without them, many of us would've died in infancy.
They're doctors like Dr Nnabueze, (Agowr'oha), Dr Attah, Dr Elechi, Dr Nnaji, Dr Ochili, Dr Oguonu, Dr Akulue, Dr Onwurah, Dr Nnamani, Dr Iyoke, Dr Ozoemena, Dr Ndukwe, Dr Ezenwa, Dr Sadiq, Dr Odoh, Dr Ezeugwu and all the others whom I did not hear about.
The least we can do is encourage them for all they did and are doing. Because when they're gone, I don't see anyone there to replace them.
By Nnaemeka Ugwu.
September 2022.
