On February 3, 2011, Jeannette Atete, then 22, jumped on a motorbike in Kimihurura to rush and pay her registration fees at ULK (Kigali Independent University) in Gisozi. Unfortunately, on the approach to Kinamba, a Kigali City suburb, a car rammed into the motorbike she was travelling on, leaving her severely injured and unconscious. To date, Atete doesn’t have a recollection of the events that led her to Kacyiru Police Hospital. 

However, she was not treated at the Police hospital because doctors there never had the resources to handle a situation as critical as hers. She was rushed to Kibagabaga Hospital from where she was again transferred to CHUK Hospital.

At CHUK, she remained admitted in the emergency section for over two weeks, reeling from unfathomable pain that was a result of three fractures she had suffered on both her legs. Because of her intricate condition, Atete spent more than two months at this hospital until Dr Faustin Kanyangabo operated on her fractured legs.

As you can imagine, rest coupled with exercise is usually the recommended treatment for these types of injuries. So, after another two months, Atete started on physiotherapy. But during one of the sessions, she fell down and went into a coma that was a result of her bones breaking again.  

"I was discharged two weeks later but my condition was as bad as it had been when I had just gotten involved in the accident. I couldn’t sit or even move a single step. All I could do was to lie on my back,” she says. 

At this time, she says, some parts of her body were rotten as a result of being bed-ridden for a long time. And she had to undergo a second operation because something had gone wrong with the first one, according to doctors. And after the second operation, she had to go back for physiotherapy, the same therapy that had earlier sent her into a coma, because she had to learn how to walk – again. 

When it rained, it poured for Atete – to dust off an old cliché. Two months later, her bones broke again and had to be cleaned up, which called for a third operation. "My bones had gotten a bad infection. So, I had to undergo four operations to stop them from breaking time and again. At this point I was so frustrated but had to keep going. I was worried that I would never recover at that point in my life when I really needed to be healthy. I had always eagerly looked forward to joining university but just when I was about to, an unanticipated accident just held me hostage in hospital for two years,” she says. 

The fifth operation

"I was later referred to Kanombe Military Hospital from where I was again referred King Faisal Hospital. At King Faisal, an orthopedic diagnosed me with a rotten skin and advised that I undergo plastic surgery,” she says. 

Being Rwanda’s only plastic surgeon, Dr Furaha was the natural choice to operate on Atete. 

She says of the operation: "I had to go through skin grafting – the type of graft surgery that involved the transplantation of skin from my thighs to my legs. This meant that I had to spend more months in hospital, which was not only disheartening but also incredibly costly for me because I was a private patient.” 

She was only able to clear her hospital bills through God’s grace, she says. At the time of the accident, she was a cashier at Masaka Farms, earning a paltry Rwf70,000 per month.

"My family couldn’t afford the costs and the insurance company that was responsible for the car that had knocked us down said it couldn’t cover all the costs after I had gotten treatment. And even as we speak, the company has never covered all the costs I incurred,” Atete, who is currently working as a part-time front desk manager at The New Times, says in a sad tone.  

Her teeth also got damaged during the accident and she still wears braces, which, she says, set her back by a whopping $2,000 (about Rwf1.3m).  

Light at the end of the tunnel 

After two years in hospital and 5 operations, Atete was finally back on her feet. And even though she was left with deep scars, she is glad she is still alive and her dream of joining university finally came to pass. 

But even as she rides that wave, Atete now lives by the saying that "once bitten, twice shy”. She says: "One of my greatest fears today is using a motorbike although it wasn’t entirely responsible for my accident.”

And something moto users can learn from her awful experience? "My advice to moto users is that you should always be the cyclist. Give rules to your moto guy. Don’t just sit back and enjoy the ride; give him instructions for your life’s sake. If you think he is too fast, tell him to slow down. Remember it’s your life he is playing with and you’re going to pay for the ride so take charge,” she says on a last note.