I don’t know how many surgeries and what kind you have experienced in your life. For me, it has been six surgeries over a period of 76 years.

My parents, the late Charles Afunaduula Ovuma Ngobi Isabirye and the late Stephanie Esteri Kyabwe Nawamwena Naigaga Wabiseatyo told me that my first surgery was on my right leg. They said a wound developed on my right leg during my growth and development in an incubator in 1949.

I was born prematurely on July 27, 1949, and needed special care in an incubator. They did not tell me how exactly the wound developed, but doctors needed to erase it. According to the story, the white doctors at Jinja Hospital cut a piece of flesh from my left buttock and grafted it where the wound was. I was three months old. I still feel the location where the flesh was excised from but cannot recognise anymore where the grafting was made.

My second surgery was on my left eye to remove a growth that was extending over my iris and interfering with vision. This surgery took place in November 1980 at The Nairobi Hospital in Kenya. I had just joined Chiromo Campus of Nairobi University for a master’s degree in zoology (the biology of conservation). I was 31 years old.

My third surgery was in March 1983 at Voi Hospital in Kenya. I was 34 years old. A huge cockroach had somehow lodged in my left ear while I was asleep in a house in Tsavo East National Park, Kenya. When I came to my senses I felt something squeezing itself deeper and deeper into my ear canal. I was worried about it destroying my eardrum. While in a lot of pain I told my wife Jane to check and tell me what it was and she established it was a cockroach.

When she tried to pull it out it went farther into the ear canal. The real pain came at around 6 am when the cockroach was dying its “death” strokes caused a lot of vibrations in the ear canal, and I fell down with relief when it had no more life. When the sun had risen and we were sure there were no dangerous animals around, we walked to the residence of the park’s research warden I remember as Kingoina – a Kisii. He drove us to Voi Hospital so that the doctors could take action. We established the hospital had never received such a case. One doctor told me it was an easy case, which would be solved in what he called the small theatre. When he tried to pull the creature out of my ear he failed.

He said he was sorry I would have to go to the main theatre. And that is where I ended up. I found 12 doctors waiting to receive me on the hospital bed in the main theatre. They were all curious. I was injected with something – anaesthesia – that sent me into unconsciousness. By the time I came back to my senses, I was sharing a bed with a patient with a huge wound on his leg. And the doctors were there to show me the creature from my ear, which they had placed by my head. From that time I hated cockroaches. I check everywhere before I sleep. If I see one I look for the eggs and destroy them with hot water.

My third surgery was at Mulago Hospital in 2000. I was 51 years old. The issue was haemorrhoids in my anal canal. Dr Awori, the surgeon, decided that I would have to undergo surgery, but warned that sometimes they come back after surgery. I don’t want to tell you the pain I went through days after the surgery.

Indeed as Dr Awori warned there was a resurgence of haemorrhoids in 2012. I was 63 years old. A doctor at Kampala International Hospital, Dr Rachkara, carried out my fourth surgery. The haemorrhoids resurfaced in 2016, but I resolved not to go for surgery again. Instead I consulted Dr Waiswa Zziwa, who works with Chinese Medicines. I have never had the problem again.

My fifth surgery was in February 2021 at Mengo Hospital’s Eye Clinic. I was 72 years old.  Cataracts were removed from my eyes to restore my declining vision. It was Dr Dan Bwonya who carried out the fear using laser technology.

My sixth surgery was on September 10, 2925, at Uro-Care Hospital in Nansana. I was nearly two months into my 76^th year. Very early, Dr Steven Watya, the proprietor of the hospital, warned me I might have to undergo surgery on my prostate. And yes, on September 10, 2025, Dr Rajab Idris, one of the resident urologists at the hospital, using laser technology, operated on my prostate. I am recuperating. 

I am writing an article titled “My Prostate Journey from Nawaka to Uro-Care Hospital”. In the article I record my experiences in a professionally upright private hospital, what I learned, relearned and unlearned about Uganda’s healthcare system regarding the prostate problem and how the environmental dimensions of healthcare are underplayed by government (central and local) and NEMA.

For God and my country.

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA