In life, they say, one is bound to encounter miracles of all shades and colours. Some take a religious perspective, while others are encountered in everyday life. Like, when did you ever meet a visually impaired person with the ability to distinguish between bank notes and coins?
Perhaps the life of Luke Lugano fits that picture.
On November 16, 1999, a terrifying incident happened to Lugano late in the evening at around 8pm that he says “completely changed” his life.
Born to a tailor father and a housewife mother who occasionally farmed a small garden in the dusty Rhonda estate in Nakuru, the now father of four says at no given time did he ever imagine he would be rendered completely blind and “utterly helpless in need of someone to help” him with mobility.
On the day of the interview, I find Lugano crouched inside a 14-seater gold-coloured matatu with ancient seats parked at a garage on a stretch leading to the Kariobangi North Light Industries. He is readying for another day of hustle from Kariobangi North all the way to Madaraka estate, his final destination, and back.
It is hardly 10am and the sweltering Nairobi heat stings the skin like a bee. Just across from the garage is the towering Holy Trinity Catholic Parish.
“I was not born blind,” the 56-year-old Lugano tells me after I make myself comfortable inside the stationary matatu. He is donning a pair of black trousers matched with immaculately clean safari boots and a sky blue ‘EMS Kenya’ shirt and a jumper.
Lugano, nicknamed after the Brazilian legend and main striker Jairznho, entered the matatu industry in 1989 after sitting his Kenya Certificate of Education exam at Nakuru Day Secondary School in 1987, where he scored a Division 3.
“I felt like I did not perform to my ability and was not sure what to do next,” he says. “After thinking for a while and with nothing else to do, I packed my things and left for Nairobi to hunt for opportunities and test myself in the world.”
ARRIVAL IN NAIROBI
Lugano, at the time only 22 years old, arrived in Nairobi and settled in the sprawling Huruma slum. He says despite being in the capital city, opportunities were still hard to come by until a friend, Ochi Dicobra, asked him if he could try his hand in the matatu industry, plying route number 26.
“Even then, I was not sure if that was what I wanted to do,” Lugano says. He, however, adds that the industry was thriving, and one could get something because “those days, money had value”.
Gradually, he started learning the ropes of touting in the early 1990s, amidst the swelling political tension in the country, characterised by agitations and demonstrations.
By 1992, he had learned how to drive and could now transition from a tout to a driver. All this while, he was also building his family piece by piece. By all accounts, life was perfect, and he did not foresee anything frightening happening to him.
“I was finding my professional footing in the matatu industry and supporting my parents still living in Nakuru,” he says.
Then, in 1999, his whole world collapsed. Lugano says that was the beginning of all his tribulations that have stalked him like a bad dream to date.
Operating amidst a tense period marked by regular violent carjackings and robberies that plagued the city in the late 1990s; it was another day for Lugano to bring his passengers to their destination at Kariobangi North from Makadara estate.
“I’ll never forget that day all my life,” he says. “After parking near the Catholic Church (in Kariobangi North) for some passengers to alight, I was surprised to feel a hard object that hit my right eye just when I was craning my neck out to make a turn.”
In the cover of darkness, he says, a gangster who wanted to rob him of the matatu he was driving, hurled a stone that knocked the lights out of him.
LOSING VISION
“The right eye stopped functioning instantly when I was hit,” he says. The tout he was working with on that day rushed him to Alice Nursing Home, less than 300 metres from the scene, where the medics on shift desperately tried to clean the damaged eye and restore his eyesight. That, however, proved futile, and they were forced to refer him to PCEA Kikuyu Hospital.
“At the hospital, there was an ongoing go-slow that went on for three days. That meant I was not attended to immediately,” he says. “When the staff resumed work, they tried to save my eye, but it was too late. My eyesight in the right eye was gone completely.”
Lugano was discharged a few days later but was advised to attend clinic on a daily basis, which proved expensive for him. “I decided to change hospitals and started attending clinic at Lions SightFirst Eye Hospital in Loresho,” he says.
But that was not the end of his troubles. He started feeling an intense pain in the right eye that throbbed with a inner pressure that started to disorient him.
“Only antibiotics would help suppress the pain, but once I stopped taking medicine, the pain returned,” Lugano says. He pauses momentarily, lost in thought, and lifts his right arm and rubs his watery right eye shielded by dark spectacles before resuming the interview.
As the pain intensified, he started receiving injections close to the eyeballs to alleviate the pain, which was building up day by day.
Then, in 2008, a senior doctor at Lion’s hospital, where he was attending his regular clinics, came up with a suggestion to surgically remove the eye. However, Lugano now thinks that was not the best advice because, after his right eye was removed, he was plunged into a new wave of endless pain that came to a head in 2011, when his left eye also started having problems.
“I started feeling headaches that would come and go,” he says. All this time, he was learning to use only one eye in his daily activities. “I used to strain a lot, especially with too much light, in the house and even at work in the evenings, and this really affected me.”
In April 2013, Lugano says something like a small cloud started forming in his left eye, which deeply worried him. He started visiting Kenyatta National Hospital, where he was given eyedrops, which only helped him temporarily.
“Once I stopped using the eyedrops, the cloud returned and covered my left eye, and the pain increased,” he says.
Then in August 2013, he missed a step in his house, and knocked his head on the wall, something that puzzled him. His entire world was becoming dark. Concerned, he asked his wife if she had switched on the lights. When she answered in the affirmative, his fears deepened.
Events were moving fast.
His family rushed him back to KNH, where they also tried to restore the left eye, but those efforts did not help him. The doctor in charge finally dropped the bombshell to Lugano and confirmed his worst fears. He was now completely blind at the age of 46.
DEPRESSION AND REHAB
Lugano immediately sank into depression that pushed him to the brink of suicide.
“I would ask my family to lock me up in the house because I did not want to meet people. Something like a stigma was setting in,” the 56-year-old says. “I felt so helpless and vulnerable, and life became meaningless for the first time. Everything changed.”
The father of four says what prevented him from giving up was the warmth and unwavering care of his wife, children and friends. “They encouraged me a lot and told me that what I was going through was not the end of life,” Lugano says.
In 2015, his family, with the support of friends and well-wishers, took him for rehabilitation at the Machakos Technical Institute for the Blind, where, for the first time, he says, he understood his condition in a positive light. Lugano stayed at the institute for six months, where he learned how to use the braille system, how to live independently with minimal assistance, like washing his own clothes and having general mobility.
“I came back home rejuvenated and returned for another six months to learn a few IT packages,” he says. Lugano adds that since then, he has never looked back. He confidently returned to his old trade of touting, where knowing looks often stare at him when he calls out on the door of his own matatu: Buruburu, Makadara, Jericho, Maringo, Jogoo Road.
In a world where disability can sometimes be viewed as a stumbling block to excellence, Lugano is a living testimony that one can transcend those barriers and rise again.
