I went to a site visit to YPDDF in Uganda and we met this girl named Joyce, she is in fourth grade. She had cerebral palsy, that is something that happens when children don't have enough oxygen while they are being born. The cause of that is your muscles curve in towards each other and that effects the way that you write or the way you walk, but they aren't different than us mentally. They understand everything but sometimes they can't talk or communicate how we do because of their condition. Although, Joyce had come up with a way to be able to write, she could write with her LEFT FOOT!!! Using her left foot writing, she became one of the best students(out of 150 students)!! She wanted to do something to make it easier to write with her foot so she came to YPDDF and they came up with a chair to hold her up and it also had a sort of a clipboard that could hold the papers that she writes on.
We also met many kids with different disabilities but Joyce stood out to me the most to me. There was one other kid that stood out to me, his name was Sam. I couldn't tell what his disability was, but my mom thinks he has polio. It is caused by a virus, that is preventable by an immunization in the US, but people still get the disease in other countries, the effects are weak muscles and sometimes it causes people to not be able to walk. The reason that Sam stood out to me was because of how friendly and sociable he was. He was singing and talking to us, it was pretty cool. Now its time for me to go to dinner and to wrap this up.
("Kwaheri" - good bye in swahili)
Those are some pretty cool looking wheelchairs. Do you know much about them?
ReplyDelete