One of the most life changing and eye opening experiences of
my life was my trip to Joy Town this week. Joy Town is a boarding school run by
the Salvation Army that has 300 physically and mentally handicapped kids. The
requirement is that all kids accepted into Joy Town have a physical disability
that requires at least 2 physiotherapy sessions a week. There is only one school that focuses on helping
these kids with disabilities in Kenya and that is Joy Town and there is only one main hospital that primarily
focuses on treating these patients with hydrocephalus and spina bifida, etc. in
Kenya and that is Bethany Kids (part of Kijabe hospital.) 3.5% of Kenyan’s 40+ million have
disabilities, which means that at least 1,400,000 throughout Kenya are not
receiving the quality medical treatment and care that they both need and
deserve.
The cost of Joy Town is low in American standards, 13,000
shillings for room and board all year, which is equivalent to $150. (This price
can unfortunately be too expensive for most Kenyan families.) The school is
from grades 1-8 and following 8th grade they take a National
examination which either places them in high school or vocational school.
(About 50% of students get high enough scores to continue on with their high school
educations. The administration told me that increasing this percentage is an
important goal of theirs!)
The administration at Joy Town has huge vision and they want
to build a rehab center, not just for the kids within the walls of the school,
but for other kids with disabilities as well. They have such a need for this!
For example, 200 kids apply to the Joy Town school every year and unfortunately
they are not able to take more than ~40 per year due to lack of funds. That
leaves thousands of other Kenyan kids with physical and mental disabilities that
need more rehabilitation and care. Right
now they are only able to open the rehab doors for outsiders to come to the
physio clinic once every 5 weeks, which is not even close to enough therapy for
kids with disabilities.
The other huge vision they have for Joy Town is having an orthopedic/prosthetic
workshop but again they lack the funds and resources, as well as the education
in these areas. All of these kids need assistive devices, wheelchairs, etc. made
specifically for them but that is not possible due to the reasons listed above.
Thankfully, they do end up with donated wheelchairs or walkers of some sort,
however, they are very worn and weathered and can be very hard to fit properly
for the kids.
I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that having a disability
has a very bad “stigma” in Kenya. Often the child with cleft lip,
hydrocephalus, spina bifida, CP (or really any type of physical or mental
disability) will be abandoned by the father for sure, and usually the mother as
well, because it’s really hard for a single mother to make the cost of medical
bills on her own. These children can be found abandoned in bushes or killed by
poison frequently because it reflects poorly on the family to have a child with
disabilities. The Kenyan villagers are rooted in their false beliefs that these
disabilities are caused by their own families’ sin and it is shameful for their
family to show these kids in public.
One of the physio assistant’s name at Joy Town is Francesca
and she has an amazing story that I want to share briefly with you. Because no
one in her village understood what disability meant they thought she was a
curse so her family when she was born so they had planned to soak her in poison
like they did to the rest of the infants that had disabilities in their village.
Thankfully her mom’s heart was softened by Francesca and she ran away with her
as a baby before any damage could be done. Even though her life was spared, Francesca
had a very hard childhood because of her undiagnosed spina bifida. It was very
challenging for her to walk and she had no friends because she had no bladder
control and had frequent accidents at school and home. She would often be
abandoned by her mother and other caretakers that were put in charge because
she was “too much of a hassle”. As an adolescent Francesca thought it was
better for her to die than to live because she had been told that by numerous
people in her life and she had continuously been abandoned for long periods of
time. She tried to take poison twice in attempts to take her own life but God
had way bigger plans for her than to die as an adolescent. Soon after the
failed suicide attempts Francesca was taken to Bethany Kids at Kijabe Hospital by
a distant relative. There she was told for the first time about her spina
bifida. Also, there she was informed for the first time that she was loved by
God. Throughout her time there her infections were treated, she was taught how
to self cath so she could control her bladder for the first time ever and she
received splints that helped her ambulate better. On top of all of that the
best part is that her and the rest of her family, including her Dad and some of
her siblings, came to know the Lord. The miracle of Francesca’s story has
continued as she is now married and has a child. Her husband and her work full
time at Joy Town. Francesca feels that her main purpose there is to share with
the kids that they are loved and very special in God’s eyes and just because
they have a disability doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have great plans for their
lives. I am so thankful that I was able to meet Francesca and see the amazing
emotional, physical, and spiritual influence that she plays in those precious kids’
lives.
The thing that is crazy at Joy Town is that the kids have so
much JOY. The joy emanates from every child and in seen in every worker that
interacts with the children. The classrooms aren’t big enough for the students
to bring in their wheelchairs so they all park their wheelchairs outside and
get on the ground in order to crawl inside to their desks. When it is break/lunch
time they crawl back to their chairs outside and the ones that are able to walk
(some even with walkers) push the ones who need help wheeling up and down the
hills. (Remember that these kids are between the ages of 7-15 so they’re not
crawling as infants might.) Their teamwork and companionship is amazing.
There’s no way that you can see them create a long train filing outside the
classroom, helping one another, and not be brought to tears. The amount of
challenges that those kids face every day is unfathomable for all of us. I
cannot even begin to imagine the difficulties that they have to undergo. But
there they are just smiling, laughing, hugging, talking, playing, and helping
one another. That’s JOY that very few of us know anything about. I feel so
blessed that I got to see a glimpse of it.
The need at Joy Town is overwhelming. They need prayers.
They need funds and financial resources. They need people to come educate
communities and villages that disability does not equal shame and there are
treatments they can give to save these beautiful children of God. They need
people to come love on the kids. They need teachers. (They have government
teachers working there and they are extremely understaffed and underpaid for
the amount of work they do.) They need special education teachers because they
do not have specialized training for this. They need PTs and OTs. (For 300 kids
who all undergo physio at least 2x/week they have 3 physios! Can you imagine
how busy that would be?!? They specifically need someone who is educated in
aquatherapy because they actually got the funds donated for a therapy pool so
they have one but none of their physios are educated on how to use the pool for
therapy with kids. If I could have stayed there longer or if I get to go back
then I would love to help them in this area because aquatherapy can be very
effective for kids since they usually hate regular land based therapy but they
love the water and don’t realize that they are undergoing therapy when they’re
in it.) They need orthotists and prosthetists since those professions don’t
exist in Kenya. They need speech therapists. (The whole country of Kenya only
has 2 SLPs- one of them does only academic research and the other lives across
the country.) They need audiologists. (For ~40 million people in Kenya they
have 2 audiologists- one of them is a new friend of mine who just moved to
Kijabe this year from Texas to start the first ever audiology program at Kijabe
hospital. She’s a courageous pioneer in the field of audiology in Kenya and her
job is so rewarding because kids from all over the country come to hear for the
first time in their life!) They need groups to come paint and build at the
school. (Right now they only have 3 of the 11 bathrooms that are handicap
accessible. All of them need to be handicap accessible since all of the kids at
the school are handicapped). They need nurses to come train and work with the kids.
(Over 60 of the kids have spinal cord injuries or spina bifida and don’t have
bladder control so they need to be taught in self cath methods).
I could go on and on about the needs at Joy Town. If you
want to help in any way or if you are interested in finding out more info I
encourage you to go to the website and have a look for yourself. And of course
feel free to talk to me if you have any questions about it! I’ll be posting the
rest of the pictures from my day there soon ; )
What a life changing experience that I’m beyond thankful
for. May I never forget those precious smiles and may I continue to pray for
the Joy Town community. And someday I hope and pray that I can live with just
1/10th as much joy as those kids do.
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