By Ally Jamah

Joseph Muli Mbithi, a 36-year-old man in Nairobi’s Kawangware area, has not risen from his bed for close to three years now. He does all bodily functions, including long and short calls, while lying in bed.

Doctors who have tried treating him say the sensitive nerves controlling movement of his hands; legs and body were damaged after suffering the barbaric beating by gangsters, causing massive internal bleeding in his head.  

Muli was returning home from work on the night of September 25, 2009, and just a few metres from his house, thugs suddenly sprung from the dark and started beating him with metal bars and rungus mercilessly.

“They took away everything in my pocket, including money and a mobile phone before disappearing back into the darkness. I slowly dragged myself home thanking God that at least I was still alive,” recalls Muli, in a slurry voice.

Lying on bed in a tiny two-room house, which he shares with his mother Francisca Ndunge Mbithi and his younger brother Albanus Muthini. His arms and legs are frozen stiffly; he can neither stretch nor fold them. He cannot rise up and is fed on bed.

His room is filled with plastic jars, which serve as his loo.

Second attack

“That night my head was aching very much. So my mother bought me some painkillers and I went to bed hoping the pain would have subsided by morning. But alas! The following morning, the pain had gotten worse,” he recalls in between gasps of breath.

Several days later, family members noticed Muli, speaking incoherently and acting strangely. On the seventh day after the attack, the family was thrown into a spin when Muli suddenly collapsed and started foaming in the mouth.

“We rushed him to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) where doctors ordered for a head scan. When results came through, doctors immediately rushed him to the Intensive Care Unit citing it as an emergency,” recalls Muli’s mother, who has been taking care of him since.

They said he had suffered a serious internal bleeding in the head and was even lucky that he had not expired a few days earlier. They had to perform major operations on his head to stanch the bleeding inside.

Muli ended up staying at KNH for seven months, mostly in an unconscious state. Doctors were highly doubtful if he could pull through. But to their relief, he opened one eye on the fifth month and the second eye on the sixth month. By the seventh month, he could recognise faces but couldn’t speak.

Unfortunately during those difficult times, Muli’s wife disappeared with their only son, probably feeling that the responsibility of taking care of her husband was too demanding.

In July 2010, the family discharged him from the hospital since he could speak and remember things normally. But he couldn’t walk or rise from bed. His hands and legs were stiff and without sensation.

Doctors said nerves for motor coordination had probably been damaged. Since the family couldn’t afford keeping him in hospital, they decided that he receives his treatment from home.

Several months of physiotherapy has yielded no effect on his frozen hands and limbs. In frustration, his mother has even gave up, and resigned to fate.

Ray of hope

Ndunge earns a living from casual labour like washing clothes and cleaning houses in Kawangware 46 where they live, to feed her family. She says her 31 year-old son; Muthini is also a casual labourer with irregular income.

 “We have to devote 100 per cent of our time to taking care of my son. He cannot be left alone. If I am not in the house, my other son remains to look after him. It is a big struggle for all us,” she says.

Her devastation is more acute when she remembers how her eldest son used to take care of her financially when he was okay, working and managing the family.

In the last few months, hopes of finding treatment for her beloved son revived when a neigbour advised her to take him to Kikuyu Mission Hospital. She was told of a driver who was totally paralysed after an accident but was revived by doctors at the hospital.

“When we went to Kikuyu, doctors gave him some injections to soften the rigidity in the muscles and said an operation is needed. They are confident that the operation would put Muli back on his feet again,” says the mother.

Unfortunately, the family is unable to raise the Sh400, 000 needed for the operation, which includes a two-month stay in the wards after the operation.

“I pray to God everyday to help me return to normal life again and live like other people. I am tired of being unable to do anything for myself. I want to help my family,” he says in a voice full of excitement.