For six days, on a ventilator and unable to speak, Bongiwe Maqandana was unaware of what had happened to her family.
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“Mommy and daddy have died. But mommy is coming back.”
When four-year-old Saliena uttered these words, she was picked up and hugged by a motherly nurse at Worcester Hospital. At the time, no one had any idea how right Saliena was.
In the confusion following the deadly bus crash in the Hex River Valley earlier this month, staff at Worcester Hospital were informed that Saliena and her seven-month-old brother, Nathi, had been orphaned.
Twenty-four people died when their bus veered off the N1 outside De Doorns on March 15.
Meanwhile the children’s mother, Bongiwe Maqandana, 35, did not know where her children were when she was rushed semi-conscious from Worcester for specialist treatment at Tygerberg Hospital. She had multiple fractures and a deep gash to her head.
For six days, on a ventilator and unable to speak, Maqandana lay in pain and doubt, unaware of what had happened to her family – her husband Thandinkosi and the two children.
Then last Friday, Helene Louw of Tygerberg’s social work department walked up to Maqandana’s bedside in the ICU ward 1 and handed her two teddy bears. One had a pink ribbon around its neck, the other a blue ribbon. Both had the words “I love you” printed on them.
It was Louw’s way of telling Maqandana that her children had survived unharmed.
On Tuesday, mother and children were reunited at the hospital’s Tygerbear children’s therapy unit.
The reunion was bittersweet, however – Thandinkosi had died in the crash.
With Nathi in her lap, Maqandana beckoned to Saliena to come over. She giggled as her daughter ran away, still carrying a bunch of flowers. But Saliena went into a plastic playhouse, shut the door and peeked out from a window.
Maqandana laughed: “She’s scared because my hair has been shaved and I am not wearing my church uniform.”
Later, though, Saliena warmed up and inspected her mom with a toy stethoscope.
“Are you still sore, mommy?” she asked.
A nurse from Worcester, Anati Makohoiso, who accompanied the children to Cape Town, said Saliena wanted to be a doctor when she grew up.
“She was following them around the hospital for a whole week, now she wants to be one as well she told me.”
She said Saliena remembered the bus accident vividly, and had told hospital staff about how passengers shouted to the driver to stop shortly before the bus veered off the road. She and her brother only sustained very minor injuries in the crash.
Also present at Tuesday’s reunion was Maqandana’s mother, Nonceba Joja, who had arrived from the Eastern Cape.
Joja had also received mixed reports about the accident and had initially thought that she was coming to identify the bodies of her daughter and grandchildren.
Now, once Maqandana has recovered and been discharged, the family will travel back to East London where Thandinkosi will be buried.
“Don’t worry baby. This time we’ll go in a taxi or maybe a train,” Maqandana comforted Saliena, before turning to the nurse:
“She’s still afraid of the big bus.”
* If you would like to make a donation towards the travel expenses for Saliena and Nathi to visit their mom in hospital, please call the Tygerbear Foundation for Traumatised Children and Families at 021 931 6717 or 082 994 4301.
daneel.knoetze@inl.co.za
Cape Argus