Life in Covid-19 isolation centre is hell, says Akinyi

Almost no one speaks to you if you’re in the 19-bed isolation centre at Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital.

Medication, mostly antibiotics and paracetamol is delivered to you by a remote-controlled robocar.

Food is slid into the room through space under the door.

Rice is the staple. Either rice with chicken or rice with beef.

This was the experience of Brenda Akinyi who left the centre on Monday for the first time in 14 days that felt like a lifetime. 

When she felt the rays of the sun hit her skin, it hit her what you can miss. 

“It is the little pleasures in life that make it worthwhile,” she said. 

The 37-year-old businesswoman described as hell, the horror of the 14 days.

Sometimes, she would hear the patients in the other isolation rooms wailing.

The four walls enclosing her seemed to be shushing her every time she tried to talk to herself to keep her emotions in check.

Cleaners always dressed in either white or greenish-blue hazmat suits were the only people Akinyi saw.

“You would not know who they were. You could hardly see their faces. It was as if I was the only person in the world and the others were aliens,”  Akinyi said.

The businesswoman said she never felt the Covid-19 symptoms at any time during her isolation.

“I never had a fever, a cough or a sneeze. I never felt any joint ache or body pain. The only thing I felt was boredom,” she said.

She was tested three times and all the results turned negative.

Monday afternoon was the first time she was allowed to see the world outside her room after she completed her isolation period.

The first thing she did was visit her mother’s grave. 

“I was happy I could now move to whatever place I could because I was free. Freedom, though many take it for granted, can prevent you from going crazy,” she said.

It was a short emotional 10-minute journey from the CGTRH to the Mbaraki Cemetery.

But for Akinyi, it seemed long, tortuous and filled with mixed feelings.

She was seeking closure over the loss of her mother, Ursula Buluma, who died with Covid-19 on April 1. Akinyi doubts the diagnosis.

Buluma was buried in her absence, hours after her death while Akinyi was in forced isolation first at the Kenya Medical Training Centre then later at the CGTRH.

Hugging the black tiles surrounded by white marble that is her mother’s final resting place, Akinyi poured her heart out.

“Why did you let me take you to the hospital if you knew you would not come out alive? Why did you allow your body to be buried while I was held? Why did you not let me come bury you?” Akinyi said.

The firstborn of two children, Akinyi said she thanks God for her mother’s life.

“I have many doubts in my mind about this whole thing. But I am gradually finding peace in my heart,” she said.  

Akinyi said her mother had been to the hospital several times before her death with conditions including pneumonia.

However, Akinyi and her brother were shocked when the bill was presented to them on Monday.

At first, they were issued with a Sh14,830 bill which they paid.

The hospital delayed her discharge because journalists were thronging the facility. 

“I was told I could not be discharged until the journalists went away,” she said.

Then they were slapped with another bill of Sh131,830.

“We could not understand this new bill and had to haggle with the hospital staff about it,” Akinyi said.

Eventually, they had to part with another Sh77,300.  

“We are still following up on that bill,” she said, afraid that she might have to part with more money.

Her two children, including a son, 16, and daughter, nine, are quarantined at the Mombasa Beach Hotel.

They were all taken on March 31 for quarantine when they were told her mother, Bumula, had Covid-19.

Akinyi defied one instruction given to her upon discharge. She was not to speak to the press.