He remembers telling his brother “at some point” that he was done fighting, that it was time to go home. It was time to book a bus ticket back to spend his last days with his mom and dad. Today, a healthier, happier Obey Togarepi feels differently. Following a successful kidney transplant, which ended his three-year battle with chronic renal failure, he believes your generous donations gave him a new lease on life.
Originally from Masvingo in Zimbabwe, Obey came to South Africa in 2005 to escape the Gukurahundi atrocities. He settled in Polokwane, gaining asylum status, and then came to the Mother City in 2008 where got regular shift work with the NGO Straatwerk. Determined to make his new life work, Obey soon became a foreman, then operations manager.
By this time, his asylum status had lapsed, and he had secured a work permit. But just as things started falling into place for him and his family, things started falling apart: not only was he was diagnosed with chronic renal failure but he discovered that, as a foreign national with a work permit, he was not eligible for state healthcare.
As Cape Town media manager Michael Morris, a special writer at Weekend Argus at the time, put it in his story highlighting Obey’s plight: “Had he been an asylum seeker, or officially a refugee, he would have received weekly dialysis and a slot on the waiting list for a kidney transplant.”
But a chronically ill Obey found himself in no-man’s land.
GOOD SAMARITANS
On hearing his story from CCID’s Social Development manager Pat Eddy, CCID online coordinator Scott Arendse decided to take matters in hand. Scott had just joined the CCID and had only met Obey once, but he was moved by his story and “wanted to do something”. An ardent tennis player, Scott conjured up a fund-raiser, setting himself the challenge of playing tennis “for 12 hours straight” and inviting people to play against him “and to pledge their financial support for each hour that I survived”. “Serving for Obey” was born.
Being a tech expert, Scott spread the news of the challenge on social media and thanks to the public’s generosity, he raised more than R30 000 for Obey in May 2016, enabling Obey to start crucial dialysis treatment at a private facility. The biggest donation, says Scott, was R1 500. “There were no big corporates involved, just individuals,” he says. “That’s what is so amazing about Obey’s story. It shows what happens when everyone contributes to a cause.”
HEALTHCARE CHALLENGES
Obey also applied for private medical aid but as it was subject to a 12-month waiting period due to his pre-existing condition, the money from Scott’s marathon tennis challenge “was able to push us until the last two weeks before my medical aid kicked in,” says Obey. To celebrate the end of Obey’s healthcare waiting period, Scott repeated the challenge in June 2017 and raised close to R9 000 which continued to go towards Obey healthcare.
The fact that Obey’s dialysis had transferred to his medical aid was a victory. But his life remained a struggle as he had to cope with being on dialysis.
“This thing [dialysis] is something else, you plan your life around it. I had to go for sessions on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and each session was four hours. And you’d think that after that whole process you’d be full of energy, but after the sessions I would struggle to even carry a backpack with an empty lunchbox,” Obey recalls.
He says his doctor, Dr Trevor Gerntholtz, a kidney specialist at Rondebosch Medical Centre, began talking to him about exploring getting a kidney transplant as this would improve his health. This led to a long process of health tests and exams.
THE BLESSING OF A KIDNEY
As he was contemplating the pros and cons, things took another turn. “My sister Beulah came home and told me she had done some tests at a hospital to try and help me,” says Obey. At the time, he didn’t know that the news would change his life forever. It led to him and his sister undergoing extensive tests with Dr Gerntholtz’s assistance. And all the results showed beyond a reasonable doubt his sister was a match and could donate her kidney to Obey, something she wanted to do. On 13 November 2018, Obey had another victory: he went for a transplant at Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital. And it was a huge success.
Obey recalls: “I remember asking my sister, ‘Why are you doing this? This is not a small thing; your life could be in danger as well’. And she said to me, ‘When you were very sick in hospital, I felt a deep pain from my mom and felt I had to do something’”.
Obey now dreams of telling his story to help raise awareness about renal failure. He says his battle has taught him to appreciate the smaller things in life. “My words cannot explain how I feel, I’m just grateful to everyone who made it all possible. You don’t have to know someone to help them.”
*Additional reporting by Brent Smith, former writer for the CCID and editor of City Views
Note: This article was first published in the 2019 winter issue of City Views.
IMAGES: Scott Arendse