Article Contributed on: 7/23/2008 4:41:55 PM
After my finishing my first year of teaching students with severe disabilities at Adams City High School in Commerce City, I was ready for summer. Yet when I heard the stories how people with disabilities are treated like animals in Makondo, Uganda, from my aunt who recently visited, I knew instantly that I would be giving up some of my vacation to help the people of this village.
My aunt,
Maria Camp, is the Executive Director of Into Your Hands, a charitable organization out of Evergreen. Into Your Hands works with the rural faith-based and community-based organizations in Makondo in order to empower the children and families of this town to rise above the poverty and disease through education.
While on her last visit to the town, my aunt noticed the local teachers' lack of education about students with disabilities, as well as the severe disregard of those with disabilities in and around the village. With this in mind I decided to donate five weeks of my summer. I would travel to Africa to provide instruction to the teachers and medical staff about educating students with disabilities
I expected to find a third-world situation, and I knew there would be significant deficiencies in the education system in rural Africa. I was prepared to deal with dismal facilities, a population hardened by their constant daily struggles to survive and a primitive education system with disregard for students with disabilities.
While in the village, I spent every day at the nursery school of the village in a room the size of a small bathroom, working with the ten students that had the most severe disabilities. In this crowded space, I worked closely with the teachers in the school and with one student in particular, David.
David was three years old, unable to walk or move his legs independently and not speaking. He had a condition the Ugandans called "down-turned feet." Basically, he had never been physically stimulated. He was ignored and left to sit on the dirt floor of his family's bungalow until the medical outreach team had found him. Otherwise, there was nothing wrong with him.
I began daily basic physical and speech therapy with him on the stoop outside of the class. At first he would cry, rock his head and pull his hand away from mine. By the third week or so, I know he had begun to recognize me and anticipate our time together by the way he would grab my hair and smile. By week five he was displaying a wider range of emotion, making about ten different sounds, and showing interest in peers. The day before I left to come home he independently kicked one of his legs!
Five weeks was not nearly enough time to completely re-haul the educational traditions of this rural town, but I hope it was a start. Now, the teachers no longer see students with disabilities as a curse. The community is beginning to accept and embrace those with differences and David is learning to live, one stimulated foot at a time.