These girls are special

By John Kiarie

I was moved close to tears the other day when I visited girls with special needs at the Sahajanand Special School in Mombasa.

They love visitors so much and those that can, reach out for a hand shake. As you walk around you realise that is another world you are walking through.

I was here on behalf of A Million Reasons, a group that donates sanitary towels to needy girls.

It was the first time A Million Reasons deliberately reached out to girls with special needs. A Million Reasons donated 200 packets of sanitary towels. Sahajanand has solely been built by the MD of Mabati Rolling Mills but for the government.

So, in a sprawling compound students can grow and learn and as I felt mostly, cope with life. There are no classes after 3pm apart from those undergoing physiotherapy.

 As you enter the compound, you are met by students playing football and volleyball and others playing with the slides. And some are blind but they come out to 'watch' anyway.

There is a big group that can't play; they have wheeled themselves out and watch the spectacle atop their chairs.

A different world. The twelve inch 9-year-old girl weighing barely 2 kilos born with micro cephullus to the autistic spectrum disorder boy; celebral palsy kids, mentally handicapped and those with hearing impairment. It's a tough tough world. This is home.

You start to think that's bearable until you reach the dorms. Those who can't play, those who are too physically disabled (am lacking words here ) are here lying on their beds and floors. Most of them have fallen off their beds.

The dorms smell of thick urine and piss and the care givers are walking up and down clearing and cleaning. You can see they are just two dealing with more than a hundred kids. I feel like picking them up from the floor but the care giver lets me know that they are comfortable as they are. But I am too disturbed by this boy eating pieces of nylon paper, I have to get it off his mouth. 

After my rounds with the headmaster; I am ready to go; with a heavy heart. I can imagine the mosquitos that the children cannot even swat and kids that will fall off their beds at night.

I wonder how safe they are and I figure that God should live there. He shouldn't live where we live; uptown where we jog because we are too fat; because we ate too many pork chops.

 He shouldn't bother with us too much with our stupid diets and checking the weights because we are too dumb to put the fork down. He should not hang around our little box offices which we hate anyway; playing Balotelli games and showing off drinks, holidays and homes on the internet. He shouldn't be hanging around clubs as we watch Arsenal , Rugby and F1. He shouldn't be anywhere when we are cheating. God is for all of us; but he should be here at Sahajanand everyday.

Today is dedicated to those souls at Sahajanand. They should be safe and they belong to heaven. I feel for the score of micro cephullus girls and boys who are always left at the school because their communities would kill them if they appeared at home to be with their families because they are a bad omen.  

-The writer is a philanthropist living and working in Mombasa

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