Telling it like it is, not like it was: Is he wearing a skirt?

Having a baby should be the happiest moment in any mother’s life. Unfortunately this is not always the case for all births. Sometimes due to some genetical anomaly or negligent medical care you end up with a child with special needs. This of course means that as a parent you will have to make changes in your life to accommodate their special needs. This will not only affect the child and mother but the rest of the family as well in more ways than one. In some cases the family will have to go through counseling in order to cope. It is especially hard on the family when other people around them are not as supportive as they need them to be. You have some people even accuse the parents of doing something wrong to deserve a special child. I have been watching the TV series Touch and there is this part where the character (played by actor Kiefer Sutherland, you will remember him from 24) is out with his special child and someone tells him that he should put his child in a cage because he doesn’t behave like other normal children do and they end up fighting.

You also have to be more patient as these special children won’t be able to meet all the developmental milestone on time with some needing assistance for the rest of their lives. There is nothing as painful as having a child who won’t look you in the eye when you are speaking with them or say “I love you” back. They do not even have social skills and cannot relate to other people as normal people do. But the best thing parents can do is just take it one day at a time and slowly learn how to cope. I must also appreciate teachers who handle the kids with special needs for the work they do. I have taught able bodied kids and gotten really frustrated so I don’t want to imagine what these special teachers go through. I remember one teacher telling me how in her class a student one day just stood up and walked to the front of the class and went for number two then went back to her seat like nothing just happened. It was her first time and she almost gave up. But with counseling and patience she has learnt to cope.

Before I learnt about my kid sister’s special needs I used to be very ignorant of just how hard it is for these people to live their lives. The things I take for granted like getting dressed up in the morning take some of them ages to do. The society we lived in previously never had systems in place to take care of people with special needs. I remembered one time when my sister almost got expelled from one of the Kenyan schools because they just didn’t know how to cope with her special needs.

For years people with special needs in the past were not cared for as there were considered a bad omen. Some are placed on the streets to beg and work jobs which no one else will do for low pay. Many parents even used to hide their special children in the house due to shame and fear of judgement. I once went to this woman’s house and the child was too pale as she had never been let out to get some sun which is very essential for to bones. By taking these kids to school and joining support groups you get to learn so much about the condition. This helps you to cope better with the condition and get support from other parents with special children. The child will also get to learn skills such as playing with other children and feeding themselves.

One woman in our hood confessed to me how when she finally agreed to take her special daughter to school she was impressed at how much she improved. I also learn that the teenage girls with special needs usually get injections to stop menstruation and contraceptives. Although I saw a feature on Citizen TV and it turns out some doctors have taken the liberty of giving ladies with special needs Tubal ligation surgeries without their consent. I’m not really sure how parents with daughters who have special needs can approach this subject of contraception. You can’t really ask the children because some of them do not know the gravity of the responsibility that comes with being sexually active. Sometimes as a parent you cannot really protect them 100% especially since there are so many “predators” out there with some of them living among us. There’s this one lady I used to know who had a mentally challenged child who got pregnant and could not express herself. Up to now nobody knows who could have done such a thing. In my village there used to be this mentally challenged woman who used to get pregnant every year. This is a new for low, raping a handicapped woman (or any other woman for that matter) is just wrong. Now I don’t know how parents are supposed to approach this because these special children are very vulnerable to abuse as they cant talk or defend themselves. I don’t blame the parents for trying to protect them, maybe the relevant authorities can tell us when being a caring parent crosses the line to abusing of rights.

Right now I’m happy that this is slowly changing as whenever I go to offices in town I meet at least one or two people with special needs. Some buildings in town including the city council toilets have amenities that are user friendly especially for people with special needs. When I apply for jobs I see some recruiters calling on people with disabilities to apply too. On K24 a few days they had a feature on a hospital in some town in Kenya where the entire staff learned sign language to communicate with patients who are deaf. It really touched me that they took time to do it. In future I hope I will manage to get time to learn sign language too.

Celebrities in Kenya have also taken up to speaking out and supporting awareness causes that cater for these special people. You all remember daddy Owen’s Mbona song and Nonini’s video encouraging people to respect people with Albinism. Daddy Owen even went to the extent of talking about the problem he has had with his eyes which I think was very brave. Talk about talking the talk and walking the walk!

I had a talk with fuegocassey and she was telling me how there is a condition whereby people with epilepsy are sensitive to flashing lights, rapidly moving pictures etc as it triggers seizures. She was concerned that many institutions don’t know this and you find some lecturers giving presentations using projectors showing rapidly moving pictures. I have never heard of such a condition and I thought she was yanking my chain until I read an issue on the same in the Saturday magazine where a young man wrote to ask for information on this condition.

He narrated how it affected his life as he cant do simple things such as; go to the movies or watch any fast and furious clips on telly or online, going to the club with his boys is out of question because of the flickering lights, he cant drive especially at night and he has to go every where with his mother. His parents are too afraid to let him move out. The strange thing is that there are programs with flashing lights on our local tv stations and I’ve never seen them warn about the effect on those who are epileptic like the video below does and many other digital TV providers. Some stations even play this song and omit the disclaimer. I just worry how many epileptic people get seizures in Kenya every time they watch it and no one cares.

I leave you with this video. But pray, tell is Kanye wearing a leather kilt (skirt is such a bad word)