Give Mobility: Wheelchairs for Nicaraguan Children

Yesterday a cute little wheel chair just made its way by bus to Mulkuku with Sister Lydia who works with Sister Sandy who keeps working to make sure that the people in the east coast of Niicaragua also have opportunities to get wheel chairs.  But wait I thought we didn’t have any wheel chairs  left to give out.  Well Aldo who is deaf never heard that he just saw the request from Sandy and started hunting for the parts of a small wheel chair and invented a wheel chair which fits the order perfectly.

The whole workshop has been going through a make over as the workers decided to take a week to really clean and organize.  That’s when Aldo really got excited and began inventing.  When Sandy came in from MKK which is six hours into the mountain, and handed him an order for a small child.  He stopped cleaning and organizing and set to work.  He had a chair ready but Sandy had to go back before he  finished. However Sister Lydia came in from the Cruz by canoe the  next day and she said she could get the wheel chair to MKK before returning to la Cruz.

Why is this wheel chair so significant?  This is what Sandy said:" This woman has a child who is really very paralyzed and she takes him everywhere she goes  carrying him and it is beginning to hurt her back. The other day she came to visit us on horseback  and arrived covered with mud with her child slung in front of her covered with mud. As she was traveling they came to a gate that they had to open in order to continue, no one was around to help.  She managed to get the gate open and the wind slammed the gate closed and spooked the horse.  The next thing she knew her and her son were in the middle of a huge mud patch trying to get out.  They got back on the horse and continued till they got to our place where they were amiming to meet and ask me about a possible wheel chair."  

When sandy called we said  “we don’t have any wheel chairs right now but you never know when you come in let’s check again.”  Aldo hasn’t stopped since and he is bound and determined to create as many wheel chairs as he can from bits and pieces.  We are still trying to find a way in the middle of this economic political social crisis in Nicaragua  to get specialized wheel chairs.  In the meantime our deaf workers are not listening to any of this they  are producing good wheel chairs and it is inspiring to us.  Aldo is on a roll with this new way of making wheel chairs out of those pieces he can put together. He is now involving Ernesto in making wheel chairs and Miguel the director of the workshop and our therapist are completely satisfied with the results.  Now other young children are getting their wheel chairs.  Our new therapist Darleen is going for a week workshop with the  World Health Organization ,WHO, on wheel chair fitting and she is going to share about Aldo's ability, during a crisis, because no one is getting any wheel chairs into Nicaragua, least of all specialized chairs for children.