The rabid dog attack
In 1992 when my father died, I was just 8 years old. My mother would go on to raise me together with my other siblings following my father's death.
Like what most unemployed widows go through, this woman really suffered to see us grow.
I remember at times she used to sleep in the bush to do amakawu (barter system) just for her to raise money for our school fees and clothes. Sometimes we would go for two months just eating "Wapachulu" which you just fry without saladi (cooking oil). Wapachulu is very small fish which is very bitter (I can arrange for those that would like to taste it).
I remember one morning in 1995 when I was in Grade 6, I was outside seated with friends and family members when I saw a stray dog enter our yard because the gate was open.
The dog then went to where mum was sweeping the surrounding and when she tried scare it with a broom, it attacked her and bit her on her right hand.
When she was taken to Chinsali District Hospital they discovered that it was a rabid dog and they were attending to three (3) other cases of the people that had been bitten earlier. The dog would then be killed by the fifth person it attacked and bit.
The doctor said there were no drugs (vaccine) at the hospital for rabies and advised that she goes to Kitwe Central Hospital which is in about 770 km from Chinsali, Muchinga Province where the attack happened.
My mother had developed a serious fever by the following day when she got onto a bus to Kitwe, and her right arm was severely swollen. She had been given some medicine by a Cuban doctor who was working at Chinsali District hospital that was to be admistered along the way and there was an accompanying prescription.
The bus driver and the passengers were very kind that they agreed to pass through Mpika
District Hospital and Serenje District Hospital so that mum could be given injections for the drug that the Cuban doctor had given her to be administered along the way.
I inquired from some medical practioners I knew about what happens when a person has been bitten by a rabid dog. I was told that normally rabies is transmitted through contact with the saliva of an infected animal. They said death usually occurs within seven (7) days after the first symptoms begin to manifest in an infected person. The person went on to say that even under the best intensive care, there were very few people who survive from rabies once symptoms show.
Three (3) out of the five (5) people that the dog bit passed away, so when mum was in Kitwe I would cry a lot because I would wonder who would take care of us and how we would pay for school if anything bad happened to her. I would constantly count the days when she was away hoping she would live beyond the 7 days that I had been told about for people that exhibited symptoms after being bitten.
I was so worried especially that her immediate younger sister had died in Kitwe less than a month earlier.
The vaccine that my mother had travelled to Kitwe for was not available at Kitwe Central Hospital, it was however found at a Chemist in the neighbouring town of Ndola in Kansenshi. Then medical personnel would start administering the vaccine from a clinic which was near Chisokone market in Kitwe. My mother spent two months in Kitwe.
The vaccine was administered for a period over of about three (3) months, two (2) of which was done in Kitwe and one (1) month in Chinsali.
I thank God that He protected the life of my beautiful mother who I adore and respect so much for who she is as a mother and everything she did for us.