For Ajoke and Des Braithwaite, losing their first daughter exactly five years ago to meningitis was devastating.
In this encounter with Yetunde Oladeinde, they open up on how she died, coping with the loss, getting into sensitisation and awareness-creation of the disease.
AT 19, Oluwagbotemi Oreoluwa Braithwaite had a lot of dreams. Dreams of finishing at the university with a First Class; dreams of making her parents and siblings proud, excelling in her career path as well as a happy married life with wonderful children.
Unfortunately, those dreams were cut short five years ago after suffering silently from meningitis and passing away before help could come her way, far away from the loving arms and warmth of her parents.
Like a storm, the news of her demise hit and shattered them.
A dream? No, it wasn’t. The tragic loss was real. During the grieving period, they found a calling sensitising and counselling others about meningitis and how to save teenagers by initiating a foundation called Boom4 Gain.
Her mother, Ajoke Braitewaite, daughter of the Parakoyi of Ibadan land, Bode Akindele, recalls Temi’s (as she is fondly called ) last days and how they received the sad news.
“Temi was little mummy in the house. She knew everything that I wanted and she did everything I wanted. She was a child that never wanted me upset. Once I get home, the house is always in place. Instead of saying ‘you do it’, she would always do it. She was my little right hand girl.”
Ajoke continued: “She was always working so hard to excel. Then, she said she had an assignment because she wanted to get a first class. She was always super and excellent in whatever she did. So, when I am praying, I would say ‘God thank you for Temi, God bless her.’ Everything about her was ordered. She doesn’t get into fights, instead she would just withdraw into a corner and sulk. But she would always assert her right as little mummy.”
To buttress her point, Ajoke remembers when Temi’s grand uncle visited them in London: “His memory of her was how she used to use a small bench to stand to wash the plates. I used to make them do chores. She was also very time-conscious. My son was the older one and so we would wake him fifteen minutes early. She would wake up, bath her two-year old brother and get them ready while I was preparing their breakfast.”
On his part, her father, Des Braithwaite, has this to say about his beloved daughter: “ Temi was a great organiser. Whenever we wanted to travel on holiday or even travel domestic like go from one person’s school to the other, Temi would do the navigation with the maps. Then we didn’t have the phones, we have now. So, she was way beyond her age.
“I was not around, I was the third person to receive the news. They were in London and it was quite a rude shock, you know the way they do things there. A police officer knocked on the door at about 7 O’clock at night to inform them about the death of Temi and my daughter Funke called me and all I remember was that she was screaming on phone. I didn’t even decipher initially what she was saying but in between the screaming, I heard ‘Temi is dead’. I just put the phone down and it was quite an unrealistic shock. When you hear things like that you don’t believe it and your mind refuses to process the reality of the situation.”
Now you want to know if there was a premonition about her death and her mother responds this way: “A week before, she called and said she wasn’t feeling well. She had flu-like symptoms, which is not unlike their age. Also, she fell and sprained her wrist but we didn’t think anything about it. On Sunday before, there was a picture taken by a parent with her housemates and she was okay.”
That Sunday, Mrs Braithwaite went to see her son in England and by the time she was through on Tuesday, she gave Temi a call but she didn’t pick her call. She tried again on Wednesday and there was no response again. Something must be wrong because that was very much unlike her girl.
“It was on Thursday evening that we actually got a text from one of her flatmates saying we should call this number; it’s about Temi and the police. At that point, I thought that as students they got in trouble with the law. But when a male and female police officers arrived at the door, I knew from my line of job that there was a problem.”
First, the officers asked if she knew Temi, made a few confirmations and told them Temi had passed on. “I just kept insisting that I wanted to see her. They said I should wait for my husband. We managed the situation throughout the night and then people started to come. In life, when they say time stood still, time does stand still. He was on the flight that morning and we waited for him to arrive. By the time he came that night, it was like days had gone by. We travelled the next morning to see her and, of course, seeing her was the hardest thing for us. You just don’t want something so beautiful to finish. We saw her looking beautiful. It was as if she was asleep. It was very difficult but very necessary.”
Ajoke then explains that it was the post mortem that actually revealed she died of meningitis. “Our first son actually had meningitis the year before as well. He was lucky, taken to hospital and given the right antibiotics just in time. So, when we now got a post mortem that she died of meningitis, we didn’t know what it was. Even though, we had been a sufferer. That is to tell you how people don’t think of meningitis.”
So, the family saw it as a calling and decided to bring something good from her death.”We tried to work with Meningitis UK but it didn’t work. We came to Nigeria and found that Nigeria is on the middle belt of meningitis. It is more prevalent in the north. In fact, two years ago about 700 deaths occurred and it is something that we shouldn’t take lightly.”
So, what has the foundation done? “What we focus on so far is awareness, educating people about what it is, quick identification of symptoms , what you can do to prevent meningitis as well as who is at risk. Those are the areas that we have been focusing on.”
In the process, Boomfor Good Foundation has organised events that include walks, games to highlight this especially in a fun way. “You are more susceptible from age 2 to 10 as well as from 16 to 24.That is why they give two vaccines. By the time you are 24, it starts wearing off.”
The foundation’s focus is on teenagers going to university because they are the ones that get less attention. “We encourage parents to take them for the dose when they go to university. For some reasons, it’s common because they are coming in contact with people from all over the world. Apparently, it is even called the lovers disease. Everyone is a carrier of the virus at the back of the throat. So, it is those who have low immune system that it might present itself.”
They also tried to go into vaccines but came to a dead end. “We are still pursuing it because of the government policies about vaccines. Any vaccine that comes into Nigeria must come in through UNICEF. It must be government approved. We are trying to work through UNICEF. Our future focus is to give vaccines to people that cannot afford it and target places like IDP camps. So, we advocate you take one and donate one to a poor child. Also we want government to put policies in place for meningitis.”
The disease, Braithwaite states, kills within 48 hours. ” So, if it is not caught on time, it kills. She came home for the weekend and we didn’t even know. Her friends didn’t know. If we rewind, my son who had it the year before was throwing up and he hadn’t eaten. He was throwing up violently, which is one of the symptoms. Also high temperature. For my son, it was his friends that noticed and they called an ambulance. By the time he got into the ambulance, he was already unconscious.”
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