Meet security guard who can’t wake up for 10 solid hours

By Silas Nyamweya | 5yrs ago | 2 min read

Samwel Opondo, a security guard, cannot wake up once he falls asleep. You’ll have to wait for 10 hours for him to stir up from slumber land.

Not even the pouring of cold water, making noise straight into his ears or creating a cacophony by drumming up utensils will get him up. His wife has tried all that.

The 31-year-old man has been like that since his days in primary school. This has caused him myriad problems, from lateness to work, missing important appointments, to not waking up during emergencies or when visitors come calling.

Gladys Opondo, his wife of eight years, has had to deal with this throughout their marriage.

“I have tried all manner of things to wake him up, including whipping, slapping, banging utensils and even shouting, but all that failed,” says Gladys who has often complained of not getting enough attention since her husband - a father of their three - is always away on duty at night and sleeps for 10 hours during the day.

Gladys, a vegetables and fruits seller in Kibra, has since given up on trying to rouse her husband, but his colleagues and supervisors at work understand his condition and have no problem with his perennial lateness as he compensates by extending his hours on duty. Surprisingly, he rarely sleeps on his job.

The disorder started when he was 14 years old, but he has never sought medical help as he didn’t consider it worthy of a doctor’s attention, despite dropping out of Tinderet Secondary School because “I always found myself late to school hence; I could not manage it. This forced me to drop out of school.”

Opondo hates the condition because, besides lateness, it denies him the opportunity to spend quality time with his wife, children, friends, relatives and colleagues.

None of his five siblings have the condition medics refer to as narcolepsy, which Dr Abdulahi Musa, a neurologist, told The Nairobian is in most cases caused by lack of hypocretin, a nerve-signalling hormone in the body.

This hormone, which is made in the hypothalamus region of the brain, controls wakefulness and sleep by acting on various groups of nerve cells in the brain, and people suffering from this condition hardly wake up easily, since their “muscles are paralysed”.

Dr Musa says narcolepsy is not specific to gender, counties, communities or occupations, and that victims can also suffer from cataplexy- a transient episode of muscle weakness, usually triggered by emotions like terror or too much crying.