Get involved, save life

One day, I was driving from Blantyre to Lilongwe. Some 50 kilometres before Balaka Turn-Off, there was a terrible bus accident. The driver tried hard to avoid hitting a young girl on the road. Unfortunately, this led to the bus going out of the road and falling badly on its side. Sadly, a few passengers died while many were badly wounded.
I found police on the scene—may be eight officers or so. But, only four of them were really working, with the rest just watching! Some four or five cars had stopped from either direction—again, only half of the cars got involved, helping to pick the injured passengers to hospitals.
There must have been 20 or 30 other people from the surrounding areas—nearly none of them helping apart from a couple of them. But there was one young man in his early 30s who had been driving to Lilongwe or to Blantyre who was the key organiser of things. He was stopping cars, and he would nearly kneel down to negotiate that they pick some of the injured people. Those driving from Lilongwe to Blantyre, he was requesting them to take the injured to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital and those driving in the opposite direction, he requested them to pick the casualties to Balaka District Hospital.
As I looked closer, I discovered that the young man was Luke Mkandawire, who was three years my junior in college. When he saw me, he felt relieved and asked me to pick three casualties. I obliged. But looking at how hard he was working and that no one else was really doing a big job, I felt sad but also inspired by his selflessness and his zeal to save life. Before I could drive off to Balaka, I jumped out of the car to help him even if it was for five minutes. I asked the police to help Luke organise logistics. I asked many of the onlookers to get involved. I stopped a couple of cars and helped negotiate with them to pick some of the casualties.
By the time I was leaving, you could see how Luke felt relieved that the problem was becoming smaller and smaller. He knew exactly how many passengers were injured. He knew who were the most critical and which ones needed to go to Queens and which ones to Balaka. He knew which casualties to prioritise in sending to hospital. All by himself, with little help from the police and the rest of the people.
Luke’s performance and selflessness completely changed me. There were many times before this when I would also go past an accident spot without getting involved. I was now transformed by Luke’s attitude and charity. Each time I have come across similar situations, I have remembered Luke and stopped to think about all the tight schedules that I am rushing to, so that like Luke, I too can get involved trying to save life. I try also to inspire others as Luke did, to get involved so that many of us can attempt to save life in cases where others—our fellow human beings—need a hand, need little effort from those able-bodied to be saved.
And so, this piece today is to propagate that inspiration that I got from Luke so that you too can join his campaign for saving lives. When you see people in critical need to be saved from death or other major calamity, please do not choose to be an onlooker—anyone can do that! Stand out and get involved to save life. Remember, next time it could be you or me who will be in need of being saved. If you and I don’t get involved and, especially if you and I do not inspire others to get involved, one day we will die because others will not get involved. But let us not lose the point, our call to getting involved is not to save ourselves in the future, but to save those in need at a particular time. Get involved and save life like Luke Mkandawire did!