Blessed greetings. My name is Barbara Okugbeni, but I use my Nigerian name, Mena, and that is how I am known here in Bahir Dar. I am originally from London, where my son, my granddaughter and the rest of my family still live. I trained in Social Work, did my degree in Social Policy and began my career as a probation officer. After ten years I realised that this was not the field for me and began working with disabled children, at first at weekends, and then, as I got hooked, full time with these amazing little people.
It was a drastic drop in wages, but I gained so much in job satisfaction that I knew this was where I belonged. I first came to Bahir Dar in January 2013 to volunteer with a project I had been raising money for. Its founder led me to believe he was running a project for disabled children. He took me to a local school with one of the only classrooms for disabled children in Bahir Dar at that time. They spoke in Amharic, which I did not understand, so I accepted what I was told: that he had started and funded this special classroom. It later came to light that this was untrue, but by then I had met and fallen in love with several disabled children, and promised their families that I would return and help them in whatever way I could.
Back in the UK, my son was very supportive of my moving to Ethiopia, even though he had just found out he was to be a father. That made my decision very difficult. I had longed to be a grandmother and wanted to be part of my grandchild's life. I meditated on it for days. Then I got on a bus in London and the decision was made for me. The top deck was completely empty. I chose a seat by a window and, as I sat down, I noticed an Ethiopian prayer card on the seat: a beautiful picture of a saint with an Amharic prayer on the back. I took it to mean that I should go.
I knew I had to do something to help these children.
Many of the mothers I had met during my first three months were single mothers. The fathers had left because of the stigma of having a disabled child, leaving the mothers unable to work, and many had been reduced to begging with their child. I met children hidden away by families too scared of how their community would react. At first this made me very angry, but in time I came to understand their situation and tried not to judge too harshly. It wasn't long ago that similar things happened in Western societies. Mothers told me the Bible says the sins of the parents are visited upon the child, and they did not want to be seen as sinners. That pressure kept their children in situations bordering on abuse.
So after settling my affairs in London, I returned to Bahir Dar and rented a small house. I took in several children from families too poor to care for them and sent them to school. I also began unofficially caring for six disabled children while their mothers worked. I had no staff, only a young girl, Maste, who helped me cook Ethiopian food, and her friend Anguach, who helped clean and wash clothes.
The mothers would bring the children to my home in the morning and collect them after work. I would give the children breakfast, shower them and give them a full-body therapeutic massage, which usually took until lunchtime. After lunch the children rested, and then we played games or did physiotherapy exercises.
I funded the project with my own money. I would go back to the UK for six months to work, then return to Bahir Dar and use what I had earned to rent the house and run the project. It wasn't ideal: much of the progress the children made in six months was undone while I was away. Proper funding was a must if the project was to last. It would mean I could employ staff, hire bajajs to bring the children to and from the project, and dedicate my life to building it and changing the lives of these beautiful children.