MBALE – When my rider came to a halt, I was long off the motorcycle and standing by the roadside having had enough of the long dusty journey from Mbale City via Busamaga road to Nabweya in Budi village.
About twenty minutes of reckless riding along the partly dusty and poorly maintained feeder road, riddled with Potholes had long left me impatient for a break.
It was a few minutes after 11.00am and I hoped that we had arrived in Budi village, the village where Mukhwana, the blind stone crusher lives, only to be told that I was going to walk uphill deep in the Budi.
And at a distance, a man hits a stone, hits it again and with his weary look, it’s easy to tell that this man is determined get a living through this stone quarrying but the conditions at quarry make it difficult.
This scenario characterises the misery faced by a number of people whose livelihood is about quarrying in this part of the country where majority have been reduced to disability after they hit their hands during the process.
This is Budi village in Namanyonyi sub-county in Mbale City where Mr Abdu Mukhwana lives with many people disabled because of constant hitting of the stones to crush them into a required size and shape.
At his home in Budi A village, Namanyonyi Sub-county in Mbale District, Mukhwana lives a modest life and maintains a small quarry in his compound.
Heaps of rocks and bricks fill the compound covering parts of the verandah, in one corner, there is a large emission of smoke that I later learn is a heat place for stones to ease the crushing.
From here, together with his 12-year-old daughter, Kassifa Nabutsale, Mukhwana crushes stone after stone with a hummer, before inquiring about the intruder in his compound.
He stares blankly in my direction as if he is seeing before asking what I want and if I have come to buy stones.
Although he used to see very well sometime before 1989, Mukhwana has now resorted to telling their presence by their voices as he can’t recogise them because he is visually impaired.
“I can’t recognise people now, I can’t also recognise strangers when they come to me but I am very sensitise to smell and sound especially when one is walking but I can trace where my quarry is without any problem and even crush stones to good required sizes and shapes,” said Mr Mukhwana.
We exchange pleasantries and I tell him the intention of my courtesy call.
“My hands are biggest assets I have as I have to measure the size of the stones just by feeling them, this is my home. I want to utilise my hands to work hard and look after my family,” he says adding he cannot go to the street to beg even if it is from his friends.
“This is how I am now surviving. It is hard but as I told you, I have a family to feed and children to take to school, clothe and even pay medical bills,” he says as he stares blankly as if struggling to draw out who I am,” Mukhwana adds.
“Mukhwana is a known family man in Budi A, says Mr Sayiya Mudebo, the village chairperson and adds he has known him to be a hardworking man. “Although he has hit his fingers many times, he has never given up. Whenever we have a chat, he tells me a man must work whether blind or not,”
Mukhwana says he has had it all, at every step someone will take interest, this is because he and visually impaired and adds that sometimes people will make fun of him while other times someone will feel and show pity for him as he hits his hands in trying to crush rocks into stones.
Mr Mudebo says Mukhwana is a true embodiment of determination, who even with life limitations, has not given up on life and fending for his family.
“…many families here have able-bodied people but their children are not in school. They cannot have complete meals. But the story is different with Mukhwana,” Mr Mudebo says.
Mukhwana got blind in 1989 but since then, he has come to accept the misfortune and forged a life with his wife, Betty Khakasa, who has stood by him during the most trying moments.
A father of ten now; Mukhwana, 59 has mastered his skill as a stone crusher – It is his lifeline and most probably, will be his deathbed work.
True, becoming blind at a later stage in life has presented Mukhwana with a few challenges but he has continued to cling on the ‘disability is not inability’ adage from which he draws inspiration.
He explained that he started crushing rocks in a grass thatched house but that now he has a wife, children and a permanent house from the sales of the crushed stones.
“I sale a heap of crushed rocks at Shs 150,000 to Shs 180,000 for every Tipper lorry and this has enabled me to build, look after my family, pay fees for my children, and I feel this is the way to go for the disabled because disability is not inability,” said Mr Mukhwana.
Mukhwana adds that although he does not see, he can now mastered how to tell the different currency notes in Uganda and that he will tell whether you have given him a ten thousand shilling note, a 200 thousand shilling note or Fifty thousand shilling note.
“Even if you gave me coins, I know how to differentiate them from each other,” adds Mukhwana.
Although Mukhwana is one of the 2.4 million other Ugandans with disability where abject poverty is their lifestyle from which there is no escape, he says his determination to come out of poverty has made him believe that he can also be rich despite the disability.
“No one cares about us. People look at us and only pity us, then leave us to rot in poverty, so we need to struggle on our won to make ends meet,” he says.
Eye specialists say there is no recent study conducted in the country to determine the rate at which the burden of eye problems is rising in the country.
But previous figures from the government’s Health Management Information System indicate that between 300,000 and 350,000 people in Uganda are blind, and more than 1.2 million have visual impairment
A recent report 2018 by World Vision suggests that up to three million Ugandans have disabilities, with 80% of them living in abject poverty.
The report also details the exclusions suffered by this group, including limited access to education, employment, shelter, politics and healthcare.
“People with disabilities share the same problems as non-disabled poor, but they experience poverty more intensely and attitudinal or structural barriers limit their opportunities to escape poverty because most of them do not think that disability is not inability,” the report states.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reckons that 10% of any given population will be with disability and that in Uganda, the number of Persons with Physical Disabilities (PWPDs) is estimated to be 7.2% of the total population.
Ms Elizabeth Rukundo, World Visions advocacy manager, argues that the situation is bad because a few people understand the issues underlying people with disabilities.
One of the misconceptions, she says, is the bundling of all people with disabilities into one group, without recognising the peculiar needs of each disability and gender.
Dr Paul Ebong a lecturer at Kyambogo University also disabled says there are many ways that disabilities can affect the ability to perform effectively on the job adding that levels of disability and ability are unique to an individual.
“Even when we hear about a blind person who is doing something new like Mukhwana we either discount it (he is the exception) or we just add one more “job that blind people can do” to our list. Seldom do we rethink our erroneous assumptions about blindness.
He revealed that like Mukhwana there are blind people who are happy and satisfied as medical transcriptionists, piano tuners, social workers, packagers and piece workers, computer programmers, Barbers and lawyers adding that the presumption that one is necessarily limited to these professions because of blindness is absolutely false.
Although Uganda as a country is a signatory to the World Health Organisation strategy for elimination of avoidable blindness by the year 2020, this period has already gone and blindness remains growing in Uganda.
Mr Jon Baraza formerly working with Mbale regional hospital and Mbale Eye Clinic says millions of people have severe vision impairment and are not able to participate in society to their fullest because they can’t access rehabilitation services.
“And in a world built on the ability to see, eye care services, including rehabilitation, must be provided closer to communities for people to achieve their maximum potential for them to fully participate in development,” Mr Baraza said.
He adds that Persons with physical disabilities experience varied disadvantages and they are social minorities systematically discriminated against in all areas of life.
They are often discriminated against in families and in society denying them equal opportunities, rights of mobility and leisure, which undermine the development of a balanced, mature, confident person.
A joint submission on periodic review for Uganda by National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda [NUDIP] says access to information by visually impaired persons is still a big challenge and urges government of Uganda to provide Brailles to transcribe print literature into
Braille for the sight impaired to be able to read.
The submission adds that government should also instruct all government bodies and private institutions to Braille or record salient information for PWDs to access.
Havard Business review Magazine says there are many sightless or visually impaired people who possess desirable skills but who have difficulty finding work, or at least work commensurate with their skills.
“We could enroll these into technical institutions to get hands on skills work, receive training as computer programmers, and those visually impaired could work effectively in especially in areas like Artisan work,” reads the Havard magazine.
Mukhwana who now lives a decent life because he works says due to the societal assumption that PWPDs especially the sight-impaired cant work, they tend to struggle a lot to society expectations and that most of them are inclined to have self pity and perceiving themselves as less human.
He says that he does not need any sympathy from people and adds that he can do what other more able-bodied people can do. “I am employed at my quarry,” he says, leaning back in his seat.
“People call me a person with a disability but when you look at me, do you see any disabilities? I am visually impaired but don’t I have hands, legs and the brains, I am not disabled as such, most people should call me ‘ a man who thinks disability is not inability,” Mukhwana says with a smile.
“We can’t live under self pity; we must go above this and use our hands to do something that will help other people recoginise us as also human who can contribute to the development of our country.” Mukhwana, the sight impaired stone crusher urges.
