Thondwe, Malawi … Some people seem to never be happy, complaining about so many things all of the time. They complain about broken relationships, poor grades, bad teachers, noisy neighbors, poor health, high taxes, and a shortage of food. However, when we focus on the things we are complaining about we miss the fact God has favored us with some very important basic things. We have hands and feet! We are able to walk and able to do things with our hands. Perhaps for just a moment we should sit back and think about this; we complain about so much but fail to consider we can walk, talk, run, and think with our minds. And maybe we should look around us and think for a minute.
Think about the physically challenged woman in a distant village who has deformed legs and is unable to walk. She wants to move around in the village and visit with her neighbors, but she can’t! She wants to go to the nearby market, but she can’t.
Sellina Chimasula is a mother of 5 children. Her legs became disabled when she was a primary school girl. After falling ill both of her legs became paralysed and weak and she could not walk. She had to drop out of school in Standard (Grade) 7. From that time when she was just 11 years old, Sellina has never had a wheelchair to aid her movement, and has never been able to move about. She had never been to her church. Never gone to the nearby market only 400 m (.248 miles) away from her home.
Now that she has one of the new mobility units, and Sellina is optimistic that life will never be the same again. “Now I will be going to the market,” She commented.
To someone with complete capabilities, it might not be an issue to worry about. One can walk to the market in 10 minutes. But for Sellina, it has taken 37 years to walk a 10 minute distance. It was not surprising to see the whole family was in cloud nine. Selina was all smiles as she is about to walk a mile.
Reported by Wilson Tembo, Malawi Project