There is a young girl about the
age of three in my compound. She lives
with her two grandmothers and a teenage relative. As you may or may not know about me I am not
a big kid person. We get along fine, but
I tire quickly and really could do without.
This little girl though is quite adorable. She directs all visitors—even those not here
to see me—to my door, and shouts my name and runs over to pet me every time I
catch her eye. For all this cuteness,
though, she is one of the most annoying and temper-tantrum prone children I
have ever dealt with.
Within seconds her laughter turns
to rage if things don’t go her way. If
it is meal time and her grandmother comes over to collect her she quickly
throws herself against the wall beating her little fists and screaming. Sometimes she screams and cries for hours on
end. If you’ve talked to me on the phone
you’ve probably heard her, she is by no means quiet. I feel for the women who care for her, who
must be at least well into their seventies.
A few weeks ago when I returned
home from traveling she seemed worse than ever.
I heard louder and more frequent tantrums; I hadn’t thought she could or
would get worse. For near a week I went
about my evenings thinking this little girl had amplified her screaming, until
I ventured over to share a snack of fruit and a woman emerged from the house
leading a boy of about ten years. The
boy, Kossi, and his mother had been living in the house for the past week, I
had never seen them, but boy had I heard them. It had been the young boy’s
screams I had contributed my little girl.
Upon seeing Kossi I felt a
profound sadness and sympathy for his mother; he was visibly mentally
handicapped. While a handicapped child
anywhere can be a great hardship for a parent, here there is nothing for these
children. Unlike in the U.S. there are absolutely
no resources for families with handicapped children. With no counselors or teachers specializing
in mental disabilities and no state funded support, families are left to fend
for themselves. Without a halfway house
or a way to earn money, as they get older and their families can no longer care
for them, many of these mentally handicapped individuals are left on their own;
becoming a town fou, living in rags, and begging around town.
As an outsider and childless I
cannot imagine the strain this boy’s mother is under. I don’t even take care of him and I have
already grown weary of my 4:45am wake-up call as Kossi pounds on our metal gate
screaming to be let out of the compound.
I flinch as he hits the other children or naively steals things from their
hands, leaving them in tears. I got
annoyed at a little girl’s relatively normal tantrums and his were so much
worse. To feel that desperation that you
cannot take care of you little boy forever and that he will never be able to
take care of himself, I can hardly imagine.
The other day as I sat on my porch
and Kossi played in the courtyard, he picked up a stick and began to practice his
Kung-Fu. It was such a normal and
endearing thing for an ten year old boy to be doing I had to smile and when I
looked over I saw Kossi’s mother leaning in the doorway eyes content on her son
and a soft smile on her lips. I was
wrong when I said there was nothing here in Togo for the mentally handicapped,
through it all there is still the patience and love of their families. For all the screaming, hardships, and such uncertain
future, you could still see how much Kossi’s mother loved him. We can all hope that as things develop more
options, support, and resources will become available to families such as his,
but for now there is always his mother’s embrace and of course a little Kung-Fu
fighting.
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