Unbreakable bond: Condoleezza Thembo swimming for family

Almost every morning one mother wakes up at 4am to take her preteen daughter to a swim club a stone’s throw from their home in Ntinda. At first, the girl was swimming for fun. Now, she’s eyeing the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympics, a dream the entire Thembo family shares.

Asked how many of her daughter’s events she’s attended, Angella Naggayi Thembo laughed, with pride: “Just ask how many have I missed? Unless I’m bedridden I’ll fly from wherever to ensure I don’t miss any event in her life.”

At competitions, Naggayi stands poolside to remind her daughter that “we have no time to waste.”

She added: “Queen knows I’m her number one fan and when she swims 12 laps, I’m also running 12 laps poolside.”

The father is equally involved. Beyond funding his daughter’s swimming dream and other aspirations, he enjoys watching her perform. “He’s always there giving her hand gestures, cheering, gently,” Naggayi said of her husband Nyombi Thembo, the Uganda Communications Commission boss.

The siblings are equally passionate about Condoleezza Nakazibwe Thembo not just because she’s the youngest member of the family, but also because she has a limb less. The 12-year-old doesn’t take this love for granted.

“I always do my best to make my family happy,” Condoleezza said.

She takes on fully-bodied swimmers without any self-pity. “Sometimes girls of her age group fear swimming against her because she gives them a hard time,” her mother said.

Fateful Saturday

November 16, 2019 was a normal Saturday but turned tragic for the Thembos. Naggayi took Condoleezza,7, and her brother Schwarzkopf Thembo,10, for swimming practice at Centenary Park in Kampala. Ahead of a big tournament, though, their coach needed extra time with them.

But Naggayi, the guest of honour at the Catholic Women’s Guild that afternoon, couldn’t afford to be late. She used another car to Garuga, a few kilometres from Entebbe Airport. “I told the driver to bring my children to Garuga after training.”

At Busega, along the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway, the speeding car skidded. The driver fled, leaving the two children on their own. The boy squeezed out. But with the car’s left side on the tarmac, the engine still running, Condoleezza was in danger. 

What followed sounds like a movie scene. Naggayi calls it the hand of God. Thembo panicked, fearing the car could catch fire with his sister stuck inside. He pulled her until she was out.

But glasses had badly damaged her left arm, around the elbow. She was bleeding profusely. Thembo used everything: his shirt, tracksuits, newspapers until the bleeding reduced. Then he waved “Please help, we need help!” But cars just sped past. Such boys are used to trap road users into robbery.

“But this boy can’t speak fluent English when he’s a robber,” one driver thought, parking from a distance. He rallied others for help. They pushed the car back on its feet.

When Condoleezza sat upright, the bleeding resumed. She started feeling the pain. At Doctors' Hospital Sseguku, on Entebbe Road, she got a blood transfusion before immediately being referred to a high-end hospital in Kampala.

46 missed calls!

All along, Naggayi was waiting for her children at Garuga. She had turned off calls from anonymous numbers, because etiquette did not allow her to pick calls while addressing the audience.

Soon after, she checked her phone to find about 46 missed calls. “What kind of woman are you?” someone yelled when she called back. “Your children are dying.” That’s as far as she recalls.

“I’m very thankful to that man who took the kids to the hospital. It’s the best I could have done myself.” 

Just when the Thembos hoped for the best, Condoleezza’s wound emitted a foul smell. Something was wrong. She had suffered gangrene—a condition that kills body tissues due to insufficient blood flow or a serious bacterial infection. The medical emergency causes septic shock when the bacteria reach one’s bloodstream.

Condoleezza was flown to Apollo Hospital in Delhi, India in a last-ditch try to save her hand. But after a thorough examination, the possibilities were extreme: amputation or death.

On November 21, six days after the accident, Condoleezza’s hand was amputated in an operation that lasted over four hours.

“It was a trying moment. But we have no regrets because we did whatever we could,” Naggayi said. “It was also costly but friends and family stood with us.”

Naggayi said the doctors in India commended their Ugandan counterparts for a great attempt to save Condoleezza’s hand. They stitched every single vein and tissue back into place. However, they needed a better suction machine to draw bad fluid from the wound while promoting its closure.

“A miracle almost happened but inferior technology failed our doctors,” Naggayi echoed the medics’ remarks.

Catch-22

Naggayi had some relief that her daughter’s life had been saved. But she was never close to healing. How would she cope with one arm? She was wondering. Then, came another tough test.

What plans do you have for the amputated part? What does your culture say? a doctor asked.

 “If there’s a test I’ve failed flat in life, that’s it. I think I got a negative zero,” Naggayi said, her vibrant voice turning shaky.  “I was unprepared, I didn’t expect it.”

Sometimes, the doctor told her, such stuff is discarded in the theatre. But African cultures are unique. So, what do we do? He prodded.

Naggayi had no answer. She had cried too much through this dark episode. She sought her husband’s opinion. And from both ends of this transoceanic call tears flowed, again.

Her husband was equally confused. What options do we have? He wondered.

Amid the dilemma, Naggayi got the piece, moved it to the bin, and dumped it there.

“I still pray that God one day tells me whether I did right or wrong,” the devout Catholic said.

For all the years I have covered disability, my mind had never wandered into that largely ignored terrain.

Now I know some patients demand to take those lost limbs home. Naggayi too thinks she maybe should have returned with the piece because it may be needed at her daughter’s burial. But her biggest prayer is that none of her children dies before she does.

For five years, the couple has tried to bury this pain and focus on their daughter. But their pain about her discarded limb may be eternal. “Nobody has ever asked me about it,” Naggayi said.

Mental strength

In August 2021, barely two years after the amputation, Condoleezza won the Mini Miss Little Universe crown. She amazed people by pulling off tasks like peeling matooke, and cycling with one arm. “I didn’t feel bad because otherwise I would have died,” she said of the amputation. Such mental fortitude is rare among people with disabilities, moreover, children that young.

Naggayi partly attributes it to counselling, love, and family support. “But above all, it’s God’s grace. We accepted everything happens for a reason and asked God to help us stop crying.”

In response, God gave them a jolly, bright, bold, and competitive girl, who has never missed an event she’s wanted to enter; who settles for nothing less than gold.

Condoleezza is happy what took away her hand did not touch swimming—a sport she’s done since two years old.  “Nothing changed. Same sport, same competition, same people,” Condoleezza said.

“And swimming against the able-bodied makes me better against those with disability.” No wonder, she’s won medals at school galas, national championships, etc.

Last month, Condoleezza received special recognition as the only handicapped swimmer at the East Africa Ocean festivals in Mombasa where she did nine races in four days. 

Condoleezza started swimming under Coach Zam-Zam, who recently died of pneumonia. Then she joined Seals Swim Club under Coach Tefiro Serunjogi, before landing in the gifted hands of national coach Muzafaru Muwanguzi, who also coaches her role model Husnah Kukundakwe at Gators Swim Club.

“Breaststroke is the best for her disability, because 80 percent of her strokes come from legs, but we can’t restrict her because she’s still a developing swimmer,” Muwanguzi said.

He describes Condoleezza as “passionate, works well with coaches and a team player.”

The coach acknowledges that Condoleezza and Kukundakwe and their mothers are equally passionate. But bigger tests await Condoleezza. “She’s doing well at her age. But things get a little harder with the pressure to balance school and sports. That’s when you tell a serious athlete,” he said.

Inspired by her brother Condoleezza won 100m gold at the Annual Disability Sports Gala in Kabale in September. “So running is also my sport.”

Project LA28

Naggayi grew up in a humble rural family and swimming was never her childhood game. “But for Condoleezza, I’m learning a lot about swimming and disability.”

While the father is the chief funder, Naggayi is all the rest: mother, manager, cheerleader, half-coach, half-teacher, etc. “Condoleezza became my full-time job.” 

If she makes her Paralympic debut in Los Angeles, she will be 16, two years later than her idol Kukundakwe who debuted in Tokyo in 2021 when she was 14.

Coach Muwaguzi said Condoleezza will be classified in one of the World Series in Australia and USA next year. That will be one step to LA28. “But we need four years of hard work by me, the coach, parents and the swimmer,” Muwaguzi said.

Condoleezza and her mother followed the coach to the Paris 2024 Paralympics to see the colour of their dream.

“I didn’t know much. So how do you go for something you don’t understand? But I now know better.”

At the Games village, they interacted with athletes, coaches, and managers. They cheered Kukundakwe during her three swimming events and watched different competitions.  

“We now know the intensity of competitions, how those stars are made. And there’s a lot we must do as parents of children with disabilities.”

Naggayi knows that para-athletes follow a strict diet and training programme. She also knows “we badly need the support of the government regarding standard facilities, “and the support of you who think swimming is a sport for the rich.”

Ugandan swimmers struggle competing in 50-metre pools after training in 25-metre pools. To save her daughter from such hindrances, Naggayi is planning to construct a 50m-pool. “We don’t want to go to LA to participate. We want to compete.”

Mother-teacher

Condoleezza must work harder than others, because while they swim with both hands, she swims with one. Yet sporting success is no excuse for academic decline. Now in Year Six at North Green International School, Kampala, Condoleezza must do the needful to cover what she missed during swimming competitions.

Her mother gets all the notes she has missed, via mail. “Sometimes we read online,” Naggayi said. And when they return, the mother, child, and teacher use the weekends to go through the work.

When the mother is away, mostly minding family business in Kasese, Condoleezza’s siblings chip in.

Need for change

For the better part of the year, Kukundakwe has been preparing for the Paris 2024 Paralympics, where she set an African record. But a few weeks later, she would do the same exams as her classmates who are full-time students.

Naggayi calls it unfair. “We need a policy that considers those children’s sacrifice for the nation and their disability. How can a child with one hand have the same time as others in a mathematics exam?”

When Condoleezza lost her hand, Naggayi was perturbed. “But probably God wanted me to come out and make noise about these issues,” she said.

Meanwhile, Condoleezza urges fellow children with disability to never give up. “Because you won’t succeed in life if you don’t believe and have hope in yourself.”

BRIEFLY

Nickname: Queen

Born: August 28, 2012 (age 12)

School: North Green International School, Kampala

Year: Six

HONOURS

1 gold medal

2 silver medals

Mini Miss Little Universe Uganda 2021

HOBBIES

Running, singing, cooking, cycling, dancing