Ethan Kisamba: Loving son taken away too soon

Monday, February 27, 2013, was one of those days like any other. After a long day’s work, I arrived home, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and called my wife Anne Gosbert, who lives in our Kahama house.

Kahama is about 810kms from Dar es Salaam. I asked about the family, Ethan Kisamba, our son aged four, and Elsa, his younger sister.

We talked about life, laughed a bit and I signed off. This was at about 5.20pm. About 45 minutes later, I got a terrible call from her. I have never known anyone to sound as heartbroken as Anne sounded that day.

“Ben”, she screamed, “Ethan amekanyagwa na gari” (Ethan has been crashed by a vehicle).
I asked her to explain to me what she meant, but she was just crying on and on. In the background, I could hear lots of noise as though there was a commotion but could not figure out what was happening. The call was later disconnected. I called back so many times, but there was no answer.

Say a little prayer
I left the sitting room and went to the bedroom. It was dark but I sat in a corner, alone, and said a prayer for my boy.

“Please God, let Ethan get through this. And please relieve his pain,” I prayed. “May he not have any broken bones, may he make it.”

I must have sat there for quite some time because the call from an unknown number came at about a half past seven. The caller identified himself as a doctor from a government hospital in Kahama, Tanzania. He asked me if I was the schoolboy’s father and I said ‘yes’. 

I immediately started shouting at him, crying, pleading to him to help my boy. He listened and told me to just make my way to the hospital. I told him I could not because I was 17 hours away in Dar es Salaam. That’s when he told me that by the time Ethan reached the hospital, he was already gone.

Calls started coming through, from our friends and neighbours in Kahama and so many of Anne’s workmates. I knew that one of the things that I dreaded the most had happened and that I had to get up, pick myself up and do whatever had to be done to give my favourite person a decent send-off.

I got up and made calls to my mother back in Kampala, my other relatives, and old friends. Even in that fog of thought, I knew I couldn’t drive from Dar es Salaam to Kahama. I later located a driver through a friend and we set off.

In life, all parents have hopes and dreams for their children. We hope that they are happy, we enjoy watching them grow and going through the different stages of life. Anne and I weren’t any different. We loved Ethan so much and we wanted to go far and wide to see him succeed. 

As our only child for two years, we doted on him and celebrated whenever he took even a little step in life.

For him to be taken away from us was something that I will never get over. And the fact that an innocent boy died so violently, in pain that I can scarcely imagine, tears away at my heart.

I have reflected on this cruel turn of events that February day following celebrations that marked his fourth birthday just 14 days earlier and I cannot understand why it had to be that way.
I later came to learn that the school van (Toyota Coaster) brought Ethan home, dropped him at the gate as usual. After stepping out, he walked round the bus but this time bent down to pick a pencil. At that time, the bus driver reversed and crashed him to death. 

Anne was inside the house waiting for him to come in when someone banged at the gate. She bore sad news. The bus had crashed into Ethan and that it was speeding away.

Anne picked up her boy, flagged down a passing tuktuk and sped to a hospital, located less than a kilometre from home. Upon reaching the hospital, doctors said the boy was dead. Anne argued with them, pleading with them to save his life.

Ethan had begun school only a month before, a journey that we thought would someday lead him to university and maybe land him a dream job with the United Nations. We had shifted from a house where we used to live to a newer one next to school where the bus could easily bring him home because we wanted him to attend what we considered the best school in town.

Anne later told me that seeing a nurse draping a white bedsheet over her son was the most gruesome image she had ever had to face. In fact, I had to bring Anne to Dar es Salaam to see psychiatrists that helped her deal with the psychological trauma.

I protected myself by refusing to look at Ethan’s body. 
In Bukomansimbi District, central Uganda, just before the burial, some relatives of mine wanted me to put a cloth or something on Ethan in some of those Baganda traditions, but I knew such images would stick with me. So, I just turned away and refused.

Irreplaceable Ethan 
Because Anne badly wanted another child after Ethan’s death, she conceived and at the end of last year, we welcomed Elaine, a baby girl. Elaine is not Ethan and Ethan can never be replaced. But I thank God all the same.

Some of the most surprising things about Ethan were that out of the blue, he would just come hug you and tell you, “baba nakupenda” (Dad, I love you). For me those are the most genuine words that anyone has ever told me.

The school director and head teacher came and apologised to me. They also offered a vehicle to transport mourners to the border. But the driver did not. There was a court case, but I decided not to get involved. I was so emotionally damaged to pursue it. Plus, I believe there is no punishment to the driver that would serve as true justice for Ethan.

Even if he is to spend years in jail, that would not bring back our boy. The driver is already a man in adulthood, his parents have already had the joy of seeing him grow. For us, he took away that possibility and for Ethan he took away the future and everything that it could bring.

Jolly boy 

Ethan was a jolly boy. At the age of three, he was already the kind of boy who would tell his mother not to worry because he had already switched off her data and watched only downloaded videos of cartoons.

I saw lots of people at the funeral, including my former schoolmates at St Henry’s College Kitovu who incredibly got to the village in Bukomansimbi before I got there even though I hadn’t directed them. In fact, they were the ones who really comforted me as I was far away in Dar es Salaam, and yet burial was in Bukomansimbi. 

It’s important for parents to spend time with their children, to hug them and to tell them that they love them. The day before his death, being a Sunday, I had spent a lot of time with him on a WhatsApp video call and he had told me those genuine words, “baba nakupenda.”

When I got back to work after burial, I had made it clear to my workmates that I did not want to discuss the tragedy. I put a brave face on. Talked more, laughed more and tried to have my mind focused on something all the time. Tough times are when I am alone. I still stare in the darkness and wish he was there, I can hear the sound of his chuckles, I miss him. But life has to go on.