Self Love Means Having Zero Tolerance For Abuse - Oscar Bamwebaze

“I hope you are strong enough to receive the results of your lab tests,” said Dr Tereza Pietroni, a UK physician working with icddr,b in Bangladesh. “I suggest you hold on tightly to that chair, as I read them out.” Filled with anxiety, my heart throbbed heavily against my feeble rib cage. “You are suffering from two very serious medical conditions,” she went on to say, visibly shaken by my results, “The first is Bilharzia, which is easily treatable. The other is Neutropenia, which means that your White Blood Cell count is very low, and you are very vulnerable to infections and disease.

 

These two conditions explain why you have been falling sick repeatedly. I don’t know why the doctors in Uganda did not detect this.” According to Dr. Tereza, I had come to Bangladesh with these conditions. I had a meeting with her husband, Dr. Mark Pietroni, a specialist in tropical diseases, working in the same hospital, and he confirmed Dr Tereza’s findings. According to him, I was the first recorded case of Bilharzia in Bangladesh, and there was no medicine available for me at the time. It was at that point that it suddenly occurred to me that in the course of trying to save the lives of others, I had almost lost my own. Had I not met Dr Tereza, I most probably would have dropped dead on the job.

 

As a result of the criminal negligence of my employer, Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), I was hastily certified as medically fit to work in this highly infectious environ, when in reality I should have been hospitalized. I had been sick through out my time as a volunteer, and could barely work for five hours at a time. Due to the racism which is prevalent in VSO Bangladesh, I was only permitted to get treatment at the British High Commission from ordinary nurses, whereas white guys got treatment from the doctor. The nurses had concluded that my medical condition was psychosomatic in nature, as a consequence of the harsh conditions under which we were living. This did not stop the pain, and I fell sick for 90% of my time with VSO. For five months, I was hounded and punished by my employer, Padakhep, to whom I had been sub contracted by VSO, for falling sick all the time. Eventually, VSO also became hostile.

 

At some point, after screaming out repeatedly, “No work no pay,” my employer, Padakhep, refused to pay me my monthly allowance, and I was reduced to the status of a beggar. I had come here to save lives, and yet here I was being hounded for falling sick. As time went by, each new day became more painful than the previous one. I was living in hell. I thought of how I had come here. Driven by a profound desire to help those who are suffering, I had quit a highly paying job in October 2007, and signed up with VSO, to work in Bangladesh, as an HIV/Aids Program Development Advisor for injecting drug users.

 

Many of my colleagues, and my Ugandan employer, thought I was crazy to do such a thing, but I vehemently defended the concept of volunteerism. According to VSO’s policies, I was to be certified as medically fit to work abroad, before I could set off for Bangladesh. I was sent to International Air Ambulance (IAA), International Medical Center (IMC), and International Hospital Kampala (IHK), where I underwent medical examination. But I quickly sensed that the doctors in these hospitals were very negligent and incompetent, and I took matters in my own hands. I informed them that I had a history of recurrent abdominal pains, chest infections, and conjunctivitis.

 

But they ignored me, until I just gave up. I informed my VSO placement advisor in Kenya, Eunice Nzioka, about the incompetence of VSO’s doctors, but she also ignored me. A few days before my departure for Bangladesh, I developed a serious eye infection. Each time I opened my eyes in broad day light, a sharp spasmodic pain would shoot right through my brain. I was furious, and I reminded Eunice Nzioka about their doctor’s negligence, but once again, she ignored me. I returned to the same hospital – IMC- and received treatment from an ophthalmologist who did not even examine my eye properly! Fortunately, I recovered.

 

By the time I arrived in Bangladesh on November/ 30/ 2007, I was certified as being medically and dentally fit to work. We were picked up at the airport, and taken to a slummy area in Dhaka called Lalmatia. Once there, we were put in a shared flat, and that was when I knew that there was something very wrong with VSO. We were made to sleep on filthy bed sheets, which were stained with blood, mucous, and human sperm! The flat was filthy, and covered in dust allover. According to our contracts, we were supposed to be two or three people in the flat, but we turned out to be six. Racism was rife here.

 

The black Africans were forced share rooms, and yet white people were permitted to live a lone, in rooms which even had a balcony! We had many problems which we wanted solved, but a problem raised by a black man would be attended to after several weeks, whereas that raised by a white person would receive immediate attention. According to our contracts, we were supposed to undergo an induction course for a period of one to three months before we could start working, but after only three days of arrival in Bangladesh, I was forced to report to work. I was stunned to also discover that most of my fellow volunteers were quite a crazy lot. They smoked marijuana openly, and drunk alcoholically. Within a short while, there were ugly scenes in our flat, where we almost disintegrated into bloody fist fights. I brought these issues to the attention of my VSO placement Advisor in Kenya, Eunice Nzioka, and the head of recruitment, Lillian Kotonya, and urged them to do something about the wide spread abuse of drugs and alcohol by volunteers.

 

Instead of solving this problem, Eunice copied my letter of complaint to my fellow volunteers, who then became very hostile towards me. My life became very difficult. I could barely sleep at night because the possibility of being attacked by my fellow volunteers was very real. I informed VSO Kenya that their actions had violated my confidentiality and caused me a lot of trouble, but as expected, they did nothing to rectify the situation. Out of desperation, I ceased to complain, and accepted the conditions under which I was living. Life was hard, and many of my fellow volunteers, who had come to Bangladesh in sound emotional/ mental health, eventually succumbed to clinical depression, were put on medication, but were denied access to a psychiatrist! They had no option but to accept treatment from registered nurses at the British High Commission in Bangladesh, who wouldn’t even permit them to see a physician! As explained earlier, the medical personnel of the British high Commission in Bangladesh were racists who ensured that white people got access to the doctor, whereas black people, or Filipinos, only got to see the nurses.

 

The stress of living with emotionally and mentally unstable people, who weren’t getting appropriate treatment, began to take its toll on me. Many volunteers, who had come to Bangladesh with a sober mind, were now drug addicts or alcoholics or both. Our shared flat was so filthy, and in a short while it looked like a pig style. Because we were denied proper induction by VSO, life became very difficult. We didn’t know where to find the police station, post office, hospitals, market places, supermarkets, or even how to communicate with the local population which spoke a rare language called Bangla. The local population itself was racist towards black people, and this further complicated my situation.

 

Two months after my arrival in Bangladesh, I encountered an even worse crisis. VSO had subcontracted me to another organization called Padakhep, and it had not paid me my allowance for two months. Each time I asked my employer for my allowance, he virtually looked the other way. Here too, black people were thought to be sub human, and my complaints or views weren’t taken seriously. I had become accustomed to being asked questions like, “Do you black people eat dogs, cats, snakes, monkeys, human beings, etc?” But this time round, I really needed my allowance, and so I fought hard. That is when Padakhep informed me that, contrary to what VSO had told me, I was actually not one of their employees, and because of that I couldn’t get paid! I was furious to learn this because prior to my departure from Uganda, I was informed that I was already hired by Padakhep! Interpol was also made to believe that I was already hired to work in Bangladesh. In order to secure my payment however, I had no option but to apply for my job afresh.

 

All the documents I signed were then back dated to give the false impression that I was hired prior to my departure from Uganda! That night, I decided to peruse through all the contractual documents I had received from VSO, and I was stunned by what I found. It turned out that all of them were not singed by the respective VSO authorities! I put pressure on VSO to issue me with a copy of my letter of appointment, but when I presented it to my employer, he refused to recognize it. It was quite clear that the document had been forged. I looked closely at my contractual documents, and they were full of contradictions. Some stated that I was hired by VSO for two years, and the others stated that I was hired for one year. I raised several complaints to VSO about these ambiguities and after a heated exchange of e mails from Bangladesh, to Kenya, to UK, my VSO program manager in Bangladesh, Mr. Faisal Khaled, called me aside and said, “I ask you very kindly to stop fighting.

 

There are contradictions in your documents because we had to forge them so that we could secure a visa and work permit for you. The NGO affairs bureau in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh high commission in Kenya, and the government of Bangladesh would not have issued you with a visa and work permit if we hadn’t forged your papers.” I froze still as he spoke, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had fallen victim to a criminal gang involved in a strange kind of human trafficking. I now knew that my papers which VSO had presented to Interpol in Uganda, to secure my certificate of good conduct, were also forged. I knew I had to do something about this, but I had to be very careful not to put my life at stake. Two weeks later, as I pondered over my next move, I was informed by VSO Bangladesh that they were going to paint our shared flat while we were still living in it. I implored them not to do so, because I am asthmatic and would suffer a serous attack.

 

By this time, I was in poor health, but I could not understand why I was perpetually sick. They agreed not to paint the flat until it was vacant, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Two days later, I fell sick in my office and decided to return to my flat at 12.00pm to rest. When I flung the door open, I found six heavily built Bangladeshi men painting the flat! There had been no warning, and as usual, because I am a black African, VSO had ignored my pleas. I suffered an asthma attack on the spot, but gathering all the strength I had left, I threw the painters out of the flat. The asthma attack I suffered was very severe, and it took me several minutes to regain my breath. I immediately called my VSO program manager, and several other staff members, and blasted them for deliberately exposing me to hazardous fumes, which had endangered my health.

 

They promised to stop painting the flat. I thought hard that day, and began to think of quitting VSO. But before I could withdraw my commitment to volunteer, I decided to write to the VSO Bangladesh country director, Mrs. Shahana Hayat. I hardly knew anything about her, because even after three months in Bangladesh, I had never interacted with her. Generally, she considered volunteers to be too inferior to deserve her attention. I sent her an e mail about my condition, and she sent me a reply, in which she promised to ensure that the painting didn’t take place again. I felt relived and returned to work. But at 8.00pm that night, she sent me another e mail in which she threatened to terminate my status as a volunteer, if I did not stop raising complaints about the conditions under which we were living! I immediately knew that there was something very wrong with VSO, but I had to be careful with every move I made.

 

I returned to my shared flat, only to discover that the painters had returned after I left, and proceeded to paint the whole flat! With no where else to stay that night, in a country which has no Ugandan embassy, I had no option but to sleep amidst those hazardous fumes. I endured the unbearable pains of several asthma attacks the whole night. In the days which followed, my condition quickly deteriorated into a serious bacterial infection of the lungs, which took two weeks to heal! I prepared myself to resign from VSO, but then I remembered what I had been told by VSO in Uganda: “volunteers who do not complete their placements, can be sued by VSO for all the money it has given them, and the money it has spent on them during training.” I was virtually penniless by this time, and did not want to return to Uganda with a heavy legal suit on my back. I carried out a small investigation, which revealed that many of my fellow volunteers were in a similar predicament.

 

They were victims of racism, medical neglect, and slaves to VSO because they were too afraid of being sued should they resign. Hardly any of us was now working as a volunteer. We were working because we were too afraid to quit. Following VSO’s policies, I made a list of complaints against VSO Bangladesh and its country director, Mrs. Shahana Hayat, and then forwarded it to Mark Goldring, VSO Chief Executive, UK, urging him to carry out an investigation into the matter, and to take appropriate disciplinary action. That was a move that I would live to regret. VSO UK instead passed on that list to VSO Bangladesh’s country director, Mrs. Shahana Hayat, and asked her to subject me to disciplinary action. It became clear to me that VSO does not follow its own policies, and is a lawless organization.

 

I panicked because I had no one to turn to for protection, and my life was at stake. I immediately sent a letter to the Inspector General of the Uganda Police force, informing him about VSO’s violation of international labor laws, national laws, and human rights. I copied the letter to: Anwar Choudhury, Commissioner, British High Commission Bangladesh; Director, Asian Centre for Human Rights; Chairperson, Coordinating Council for Human Rights in Bangladesh; Director General, International Labor Organization; Human Rights Watch; Hon Edward Ssekandi, Speaker of the Parliament of the republic of Uganda; Commissioner, British High Commission Uganda; Editors of The New vision newspaper, Uganda; The editor of The Monitor Newspaper, Uganda; 93.3 KFM, Uganda; Interpol, Uganda; etc I hoped that these people would do something about this terrible situation, but I was wrong. None of them was brave enough to intervene in this situation, and I was left a lone to suffer. A fellow volunteer advised me to withdraw all the complaints I had raised against Mrs. Shahana Hayat, in the interests of my own security. I thought hard about this, and finally withdrew all my complaints. VSO set up a kangaroo court, in which I was put on trial for raising complaints, and for writing to other organizations about the conditions under which we were living.

 

According to VSO’s policies, volunteers are not permitted to write to the outside world, unless what they are writing about has been censured by VSO’s media department! Prior to my trial, I was given a list of the grounds on which I was being tried. I stood the risk of having my status as a volunteer withdrawn, and of being sued for the money VSO had already spent on me. During the trial, which was headed by Mrs. Shahana Hayat, I was instead presented with a completely different list of accusations. I defended myself, and was put on probation, but a few days later, I was given a copy of the minutes of my trial to sign, and I realized that they too were forged! They did not reflect anything close to what had transpired during the trial. But I had no option but to sign them. Meanwhile, I continued to fall sick, and my employer, Padakhep, began to lose his patience. “Why you fall sick all the time”, my work mates would confront me loudly in the presence of everyone “Why you not work?...No work no pay! You bad volunteer!…” They refused to give me my monthly allowance, and I had to beg VSO for it. My medical condition began to worry me. I began to think that I had HIV, and so I carried out an HIV test at the British High Commission. When they got my results, they sent them to VSO, in an open envelope, through the VSO driver! I picked my results from Mrs. Shahana, after almost everyone had read them!!! Fortunately, I was HIV negative. My situation was further complicated by the fact that I was given an impossible job to do. My background is in psychology, but I was given the job of a researcher/ statistician.

 

VSO had promised to provide me with the training necessary to make me perform on the job, but when I requested for it, they refused to provide it. Padkahep refused to permit to go into the field, and by the end of five months, I had not seen a single patient (drug addict). My health deteriorated further, and I began to suffer from headaches. I decided to pay a visit to the dentist. Two months prior to this, International Medical Center, Uganda, had certified me as being ‘dentally fit’. But the results I got from Dr. Gilbert Halder, a Bangladesh dentist working for Halder Dental Chamber, Bangladesh, were shocking. Dr Halder discovered that I had thirteen dental cavities! According to my contract, VSO was supposed to cater for my emergency dental treatment, and because of this, I thought that I would get immediate medical treatment. I was wrong, for it took me more than two months to get dental treatment! It was shortly after this that I went to icddr,b to see Dr Teresa Pietronni, who in less than ten minutes, had requested for stool and blood samples, which would detect the root causes of my illnesses. I will forever be indebted to her, because had I not met her, I most certainly would have died. Knowing how desperate my situation was, I resigned from Padakhep, and asked VSO for an alternative placement, which was suitable for a person of my education, skills and experience. VSO refused to offer me that placement, and began to prepare for my return to Uganda. I was totally broke by this time, and I hoped that VSO would give me some money with which to start my life afresh in Uganda. For five months, I was earning a meager 128 dollars per month, with additional 79 pounds in grants.

 

As expected, VSO threatened to sue me for the 500 pounds they had given to me as a pre departure grant in 2007, and for all the money they had spent on my training. My grants totaled to 395 pounds, and yet VSO was suing me for close to 1000 pounds or more! I threatened to sue VSO if they did not give me my grants, and for some reason, they agreed to give me some of it. I returned to Uganda on 1/may/ 08, to begin my life from scratch. I immediately reported to IHK for medical treatment. They took blood samples as usual, but did not have any medicine in store for Bilharzia! So, I had to run around town until I got the medicine from a cheap pharmacy! The doctors at IHK requested me to report back in one week’s time so that I can get treatment for my Neutropenia from a specialist. On 6/ May/08 I went back to IHK for medical treatment. I was shocked to learn that the hospital had lost all the records of my last treatment! They had lost my medical file! After three hours of waiting in vain, I just walked away. I am sure God will heal me, where negligent doctors have failed. Because of my passion to help those who are suffering, I have lost almost everything I had. One of my patients, a 52 year old alcoholic physician, once told me in 2003 that, “In this business of saving lives, do not forget to save your own.” I did not take heed of his warning, and I almost lost my life. Organizations like VSO are not genuine charitable organizations. They are international organizations which are involved in a subtle form of human trafficking.

 

They recruit highly qualified people from one part of the world, hire them at the lowest possible cost, send them to where they are most needed, and ensure that threats of legal suits keep them working for as along as two years or more. Then VSO gets heavily funded by donors for carrying out this operation, money changes hands, and everyone, except the volunteers, is happy. These volunteers are made to sign contracts which bar them from communicating to the outside world about the conditions under which they are living and working. Many of them can’t just quit and return home because they have already lost their jobs at home, have meager savings, and are terrified of legal suits. This, in my opinion, is not saving lives, but enslaving lives. It is something very similar to the average cult.