In My Dreams I Dance. Anne Wafula-Strike

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СКАЧАТЬ over the designs we created and it made the whole thing a little bit easier for me to bear. When I got bored I would pick up sharp sticks and make chipped patterns in the plaster. Whether I liked it or not, it was part of me and so I just had to find ways to live with it.

      My mum and dad did their best to stay cheerful, but both were devastated by my condition. Every time they looked at me they saw the happy, active child I had been before the virus had struck. Seeing their little girl struggle with a partially paralysed body caused them great pain.

      ‘Your sickness is like a knife going through my heart,’ my dad would often say sadly.

      

      My mum and dad were members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God and when I arrived at church with my mum, the people said, ‘Let that crippled child come forward and we will pray for her.’

      Reluctantly my mum took me to the front of the church, where a group of congregants shook me hard and pulled my legs. I can still remember the agony of that pulling.

      ‘Don’t cry, child. We’re trying to cast out the demons in your body,’ they said.

      ‘Leave the poor girl alone,’ my mum said. ‘She has suffered enough.’

      She and my dad were very unhappy with the church for the attitude they adopted towards me. But both were devout Christians, so they continued to attend services there.

      When my mum returned to the village for a visit she encountered similar attitudes. Even though we were no longer living there, people wanted to come to our house to pray for the demons inside me to be cast out. They told my mum she needed to slaughter goats and sacrifice them if she wanted me to get better, but my mum and dad refused to get involved with these superstitious rituals.

      ‘Our daughter has polio and she’s trying to get help,’ my mum said firmly.

      Although we didn’t encounter problems in the barracks, there was plenty of prejudice in Nairobi too. My brother and sisters faced abuse because of my disability when they attended school. ‘Our parents say we shouldn’t play with you because your sister is a cripple and you will bring bad luck to us,’ their schoolfriends said. But they ignored their jibes, loyally defending me and doing their best to protect me. They carried me on their backs to wherever they were going to play and put me down nearby so that I could be part of what was going on. When they climbed trees to pick fruit, they made sure they threw some down for me to eat.

      My brother was often busy playing football with the other boys or killing animals or birds with a slingshot, so I didn’t get too involved with his games, but Alice, Jane and I often played together. To them, I wasn’t a girl with a disability, but simply their sister Anne.

      My dad gave me the pet name Mamy, a term of love and respect, and my mum did everything for me—bathing me, wiping my bottom and putting me to bed, helped by my brother and sisters. No child could have been more loved and cherished by their family than I was by mine.

      My family became very sensitive to my difficulties, but not all of my relatives understood my condition so well. I used to have long hair and one of my earliest memories is of sitting uncomfortably on the knee of an aunt while she plaited my hair in cornrows. Sitting in that position caused me great pain and I began to cry.

      ‘That girl’s body is aching all over. Don’t hurt her more by plaiting her hair,’ my dad said.

      Although at that time I wasn’t fully aware that I was disabled, I was aware that I was different from other children and my parents spent a lot of time reassuring me. They told me that I was a beautiful, intelligent girl who would succeed in life. ‘Don’t listen to what anyone else says. You’re beautiful on the inside and the outside and everything will be fine,’ my dad often said. ‘Your middle name is Olympia and your destiny is to be great.’

      When he returned home at the end of the day he always called out, ‘Where is my rose flower?’

      My heart lifted when I heard him utter those words.

      

      When I first went to Kabete I didn’t pay too much attention to the other patients, but by the time I was four I began to notice that there were others like me at the centre. I became friendly with a little girl called Rosa who also had polio and we used to play together at the hospital.

      When I was four-and-a-half years old the staff at Kabete decided that I didn’t need to be in plaster any longer. The day I heard that news I clapped my hands together and whooped with joy. I thought that at long last my body would be left in peace. For a few months, it was. But my relief was short-lived.

      ‘It’s time to fit you with some callipers, Anne,’ the staff told me. I’d no idea what they were talking about, but I didn’t like the sound of it.

      I cried when I was fitted with my first pair of callipers and crutches. They felt almost as restrictive as the plaster. I felt cheated. I had simply exchanged one prison for another.

      The aim of the callipers was to keep my legs straight and help me to walk, but I could only wear them for an hour at a time at first because they hurt me so much. They were clamped to the whole of my legs, with an extension for the lower part of my ribcage. The metal was held to my legs with leather straps. The whole contraption was very hot and uncomfortable, totally impractical for use in a hot African country.

      My right leg was a few inches shorter than the left and I was given ugly black polio boots to wear, one a few inches higher than the other to balance my uneven legs. I hated wearing these boots almost as much as wearing the callipers. I looked longingly at the other children of my age who ran around barefoot or in flip flops.

      I did enjoy the gentle, relaxing physiotherapy treatment on offer at Kabete, but sometimes the physiotherapists pulled my tendons to stretch my legs and it was so painful that I used to scream. I grew to hate doctors in white coats and associated them only with pain. I tried to accept my situation, but I had reached an age where all I wanted was to be like the other children who ran around the barracks in nothing more than a few flimsy clothes.

       Chapter Three Joyland

      When I was four-and-a-half years old my dad found out about a boarding school for children with disabilities called Joyland School for the Physically Handicapped and decided that that would be the best possible place for me to go. English missionaries from the Salvation Army ran the school and the standard of education was said to be very high there. For my dad the school combined his love of education and of all things English, so he was delighted when I secured a place there.

      There were actually two schools—one in Thika, near Nairobi, and one in Kisumu, about four hours’ drive from our village. It was decided that I would attend the latter.

      I was devastated when my dad broke the news to me. I was used to being close to my mum day and night and the idea of being separated from her was too much to bear. My mum did everything for me—how would I survive without her? And how would I manage without my sisters? I was sure that nobody else would be able to play games so well with me.

      ‘Please don’t make me go. I’m scared. I can’t manage without all of you,’ I sobbed. I was surrounded by love and suddenly that love was going to be snatched away from me.

      ‘You can come home every three months СКАЧАТЬ