A New Life for Fakahdu

In the United States, a child born with a movement disorder like cerebral palsy almost always receives some kind of medical care. No matter how poor the family is, our public health system is able to step in and provide for the basic necessities: crutches, wheelchairs, medication, financial assistance ... Our public school system is geared to provide an education for a student with a disability. We have special buses, special education teachers, and even the Special Olympics to make sure that these children are provided with the best our society has to offer.

Not so in the third world. Bogale's older brother Fakahdu has cerebral palsy and this is what he got: a stick. A tree branch trimmed to his height so he could navigate the rocky pathway to and from his home. A stick to help him cross that rickety bridge.

When his mother Arakash went out to scavenge, she took 12-year-old Fakahdu whenever she could. But, as she explained, he fell down. Often. When a volunteer was there in November 2009, Fakahdu had a large scrape on his head. Arakash said that sometimes she just couldn't manage to take him on the longer journeys. On those days, she locked him in their one-room apartment so that he wouldn't hurt himself.

A pair of crutches (less than $40 on Amazon), were packed into my duffel for my first trip to Africa. Bogale came with us to give them to him.

Fakahdu is intelligent and although he cannot speak, he immediately grasped what the crutches were for and how they could be used. He took a few steps toward the front door of the apartment while his mom alternately sobbed and laughed for joy.

Bogale. I wish one of us had gotten a picture. He was jumping up and down, clapping his hands as if he had just gotten the best gift ever. He knew that this simple gift changed not only Fakahdu's life, but his mother's life as well.

Childhood memories

For the vast majority of Americans, our childhood memories are filled with bicycle rides past neatly trimmed lawns, backyard barbecues, playing games inside on a rainy day ... It doesn't matter whether you were raised in the city or the country, East or West Coast, far north or Deep South, it doesn't even matter what decade you were born in ... there is a commonality to American life that we tend to take for granted. After visiting Ethiopia, I doubt I'll ever be able to look back on my own childhood the same way again.

Nikki took these pictures on the day we visited Bogale's house. I'd like to share them with you.

Above, the "henhouses." In the upper right-hand corner, the stack of rags is actually someone's house, built under a tree.

At right, the bridge across the culvert.

Below, the path to Bogale and Fakahdu's front door.

This is the journey that Bogale makes every day, the path and bridge that Fakahdu must now learn to traverse with his new crutches, the route that Arakash makes several times a day carrying food and items she has scavenged from Addis' meager trash piles. This is the only life they know.

We visited Bogale's house the day after we visited Workay and Bazawit. When Muday told us that Bogale's house was much more "typical" of the way the students live, we realized that Workay's little one-room apartment was "upscale." The revelation sobered all of us.

When we left, several of us were crying. We realized that, among the street people of Addis, even Bogale's house was something to aspire to.