Just now he saw, now he doesnt

Doctors at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital have come to a painful conclusion; his eyes have been pierced and hence useless. On Thursday, doctors removed the left eye and the other will be removed on Monday and that will Maida Fedson blind a thing he never prepared for.

It was a day like any other, Maida having been laid off by his employer, was running up and down to find another job. He had to since living alone in Mbayani requires a job to pay the bills. Maida was invited by a friend in Machinjiri who had a job opening.

Luck was not with Maida as the friend was not home and Maida started back home he got delayed in the way and by 7pm he was approaching Chirimba Bridge the luck was to slip further to the negative.

“I saw two men, I passed one and as I approached the other one the one I had passed grabbed me from behind and squashed my throat so that I shouldn’t shout, the other man then flung his machete which landed on my head and opened me up,” narrated Maida sitting his hospital bed surrounded by family, sympathisers and the whole ward was quite listening too and interjecting with gasps when Maida toughed on the graphic part of his story.

Maida said the other guy then sliced a knife across his face cutting across the eyes like the equator, slicing both his eyes open, even though the eyelid was down. By then he had found space to shout and he had alerted a guard who came rushing to the scene scaring the assailers away.  

Maida was left with pangs of pain, he does not understand why he was attacked because not of the attackers took anything material from him apart from his sight and subsequently and arguably his life...

“At that moment, I knew my lights had gone off, that would never see again,” said Maida.

The guard took him to Chirimba Police where the officers starting bullying him instead of helping him.

“They said I had been attacked while trying to sleep with another man’s wife, they said I had been thieving, they started interrogating me despite my pain they asked me to list all my friends which I did promptly.

“They sent me to the minibus stage with a police report and that’s all they did for me, I had to use my own money and thanks to the kindness of the minibus conductor I was escorted to Queens (QECH),” said Maida.

Maida - Now a Liability

Four days will have to pass before Maida’s relatives knew of the attack; it had to take fellow patients alerting them a thing that infuriated Lickson Mangani, the nephew who stormed Chirimba police to ask after the behaviour of the cops.

“No statement was taken from Maida, they mocked him, they didn’t care to take to the hospital, they gave him a police report but when I went there they all denied until I showed them the report they gave Maida,” said an angry Mangani.

  The police report a bloody copy of which Nation on Sunday has seen has a Chirimba Police stamp, signed by a Jinazale on the 18 of June.

However Blantyre Police Assistant Public Relations Officer, Lameck Yona Thembachako, when contacted said Chirimba police has no vehicle and thus would have done nothing. On the officers mocking Maida, he said the police must have had their reasons because they cannot mock someone seeking their help.

Thembachako explained that when people go to the hospital they should return to police to have their statements taken.

Mangani said the Chirimba police then told him that the investigations would be difficult because nothing was taken from Maida. 

“After they remove the other eye, we are thinking of sending him back to the village in Salima where his mother and brothers are,” said Mangani.

Mangani said, and it is also calculable, that Maida’s life will not be the same again and appealed for well-wishers to step in since Maida’s mother is unemployed. 

Maida is obviously a strong character he gave the interview just hours after an operation to remove his right eye. He takes pills unaided and speaks calmly and the fact that he knew that he would not see seconds after being attacked will make his transition into blindness less stressful.

 To Maida the saying “Now you see, now you don’t” is actually literary applicable to his story and what awaits him in Salima is a story for another day, but surely a single, energetic 24 year old youth has been stopped in his tracks by people who are probably reading this and saying, “that’s us…”