From Frogs to medicine: Jim Spires’ eulogy for frog hunter doctor.

BY JIM SPIRE SSENTONGO

KAMPALA. John was passionately obsessed with medicine. Unlike some of us, he knew what he wanted to become very early in life. In high school, when they started dissecting frogs in Biology, he hunted for frogs everywhere like a madman. In the exercise, which I found awful, he was already seeing himself conducting operations. When he finally became a medic, his practice remained obsessive, yet always with his signature smile. He sought for knowledge endlessly, and quietly. At the time of his death he had just finished a second Masters in Romania, for which he was paying himself. And he was talking of starting another. When he was bored, he would often pull out his iPad, and it is medical stuff you would see him reading or watching off YouTube.

Whenever we were together as a family, the most annoying thing was his phone, which rang endlessly into the night – and, against all advice to rest, he always picked. They were often patients with all sorts of problems, whom he calmly responded to offering free consultation or advising them to go to hospital.

He often came to the village with medicines, because when people saw him (especially the elderly), within a short time they would start walking into our home to cry to him about their ailments. These he always treated and advised free of charge. Sometimes he ran free medical camps.

I once fundraised here for a hospital we set up in the village (Masaka/Kyotera), Padre Pio Hospital, spearheaded by Brother Joseph Zziwa. The idea was mainly to help to extend affordable quality health services to this poor area that was severely devastated by AIDS and that remains challenged in accessing such services. John was the Managing Director of the hospital. It is a baby that he spoke so fondly of, how it would grow to transform healthcare in the region – as our way of giving back to the community.

His dreams and conversations were hospitals and medical practice. Since in our family five of my siblings are into medical practice and/or administration, conversations during our family meetings would often end up in medicine. Analysis after analysis, Plans after plans!

When John would learn something new, that became his song. When he learnt laparoscopic surgery in India, he would always be watching videos of how it worked, and explaining to whoever cared to listen. With strange excitement, he would mobilise fellow doctors to teach them whatever new thing he studied, and sparing time to explain it in media – especially on @fsnakazibwe’s show.

Medicine turned John into a workaholic, conducting complicated surgeries late into the night. He would sometimes start dosing in the middle of conversation, and, when I laughed, he would tell me that he had conducted an 8 hour surgery! When you thought this was too much on him, then you would hear that he is setting up a fertility Center! And despite of all he did, he never sought for any glorification. He kept a very low profile. When you found him at his hospital, you would think he was any other worker. When he died, and all sorts of people were giving testimonies of how he treated or helped them deliver children after long struggles and failures elsewhere, many were wondering: ‘How come I didn’t get to know him!’

Whoever interacted with him would know what the country lost in John, the great hope he had created in Uganda’s medical practice, and the lives he touched. When his funeral gathered thousands of people that spoke in tears of how he meant a lot to them, even we his own close family felt like we never really knew what we had in our brother! It looked like all his non-stop patients’ phone calls were now gathered as real crying people. What he sometimes jokingly said, that “I don’t know where you will seat my people when I die” came to have meaning as we sent him off. The way he was loved by so many is a source of both pain and joy. Though he died at only 47, he left a legacy of a 100 year old. If only grief permitted us to celebrate.