This article is from page 28 of the 2010-02-23 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 28 JPG
THE only way for 11-year-old Mo- ses Moody to come in from school is for him to use his arms to drag his crippled legs across the floor on his one-room home in the township at Migombani.
He has use of a wheelchair in the parish school, built by Fr Martin Keane with donations, but the tiny door is far too small as is the room which he shares with his mother, An- gela and nine other adults and chil- dren, all family.
Angela Naliaka throws her grand- daughter, little Angela, up on her
back and wraps her Africa-style, so she can wash little Moses and mas- sage him with coconut oil to try to keep the his skin from constantly breaking out in sores.
Angela’s husband left when she be- came pregnant again after Moses. He told her it was “too much and he went to another woman”. Now Angela has to fend for herself and her children with two of her daughters and her grandchildren also living in the one Keleee mellem aoe
Angela has a job, cooking for the children at the parish school.
“T am thankful to Fr Martin — he has given me a job so I can earn money
to buy food and pay the rent.”
Baby Angela, who is less than a year old, is coughing loudly. She has had pneumonia, a condition not helped by the fact that all of the town- ship families cook on a tiny charcoal Stove, indoors.
Surgery could have helped young Moses, who was born with an open wound in his back but accessing the mostly charity run health services in Kenya is not an easy task. By the time he got into the hospital system, it was too late for surgeons to save any of the movement in his lower body.
He’s doubly incontinent and An-
gela has to buy toddler size nappies to change him four times a day, a ter- rible drain on family finances.
The disease which has twisted and crippled his body has been eliminat- ed in most of the western world.
It’s possible that proper nutrition would have saved him from being born disabled and the vaccine which would have protected him against infant Polio costs just a few pence. But there is no progamme of immu- nisation in this country. The vaccine which would have immunised his mother and saved him for the birth defects costs just a few pence.
The family home has a little fur-
niture, but the only place to store clothes is a wooden wardrobe which is falling to bits. Angela also stores clothes in an old suitcase, also crum- bling and useless. The only thing she asks of the Building of Hope is that one of the carpenters might be able to fix the wardrobe and if one of the many cases brought purely to carry clothes, toys and sweets for the children might be donated to her for storage.
The latter won’t be a problem but the former might be beyond even the skills of the amazing craftsmen who are on the site.
We promise to do our best.