Give Mobility: Wheelchairs for Nicaraguan Children

How do you deal with several major crisis at the same time?  For instance, the corona virus and the social political and economic crisis in Nicaragua.  If you ask one young man who has received a wheel chair from Special Families he says “well you just have to wheel around them”.  You have to keep a good face on a bad day.  The wheel chair workshop has been wheeling, reeling from the Nica crisis as it has become almost impossible to get mobility aides into the country and Nicaragua does not manufacture wheel chairs or other major mobility aides.  The fact is that what we need are specialty CP wheel chairs and wheel chairs made for children and we are working on several avenues to try to get the wheel chairs to come into the country but stop, the corona virus has almost stopped everything and did stop our work in this endeavor, but not our spirts.

 As of March 25 we decided to go on lock down to protect our health and those around us a very hard decision but necessary for an organization who works with people who are vulnerable and at the greatest risk of contracting this virus.   
The decision was made by the foundation to close as Nicaragua started having cases of Covid19.  We could not envision doing anything else. This was not mandated by the government, schools have stayed open, nothing has been shut by government health concerns. At this time in early July the government of Nicaragua has mostly ignored the pandemic and have not order any social distancing or self-protection for their citizens.But is planning many massive rallys and activities to celebrate the month of July. The country leads in the percentage of deaths : cases ratio in Central America.  This is a sad reality that we have to live with and come through alive. Our projected return is now scheduled for middle of august., with hopes that we can feel secure to bring all workers back without infecting one another.  Since there is no testing in our country we don’t want to just start up again.  It is very hard without any support or acceptance by the government and more support for the spread of the virus.  Everything is an unknown for us but we continue to follow social media from central american countries and the World Health organization.  That is all we have. 

 We also set up WhatsApp groups to keep in touch with workers and those families who have access to social media. But the wheel chair workshop is essential.  The other day a man came knocking at my house door urgently stating that he had a wheel chair to return. When I opened the door it was a man who had received a wheel chair to help his mother.  He lives in a rural community outside of Matagalpa and he said his mother had just died and he wanted to make sure and get the wheel chair back to us in case anyone needed it.  This is the orientation that we give to people who receive wheel chairs that if they no longer need them they could return them to us so we can help others.  He was very proud that he had received the wheel chair which helped his mother but now maybe someone else could use it.  I received the wheel chair with many thanks and he and his other masked companion drove into the sunset happy that their mother’s memory would bring mobility to others.  At that very moment the phone rang and someone said “I know you are closed but my brother needs a wheel chair badly can you help me. Please!”  Usually we have people come in and get fitted and make sure that the need was legitimate.  At first I was going to say I am sorry but we have no wheel chairs, which is the truth, but there was the returned wheel chair staring at me saying “here I am.”  So this family came the next day to pick up the chair and promised that when they didn’t need it they would return it for someone else. Another masked stranger left with the wheel chair and the hope that it offers at this time.  I felt like I had just lived through a miracle.   But wait I started getting calls from people suffering from the virus and needing walkers and canes.  Yes, I could do that from my home because we have several stored there since we are doing remodeling at the workshop just before we closed.  So even though we are closed we are still working from home.  I got another call for a hospital bed.  And the head of the workshop said he could come in and ready the bed for someone to pick up.  Another corona virus case.  However, this one did not end so well.  When it was time to pick up the bed the family called and canceled, their father had just died and they didn’t want us to go through all the trouble so they called from hospital at 6 am after seeing the morgue filled with bodies, they were concerned for us. It is a grim reminder to us why we are shut down for the moment.   

 

We had just told our workers “you are being paid to stay at home and take care of your health and protect yourself and others.” three months into the lock down we have several of our workers who have gotten the virus and are struggling to recuperate because it is not recognized here and there is no special treatment developed or put into practice.  We also recognized that people were not getting the right nutrition and most social programs were shut down many permanently so we have taken it on ourselves to begin to provide monthly food packages. Staff were very active in getting out each month more than 200 packages of basic grains to people we work with in the neighborhoods of Matagalpa, including the workers.  

We used the delivery of these food packages to educate as we went in trucks with our workers in protective gear not getting out of the trucks but letting each individual enter into the double cabin and receive a small talk about the virus and being able to talk a bit about their experience so far.  We are trying to motivate people to stay in their homes to avoid the virus. This is not our usual style of direct work with the families but because public transportation is so crowded and the food shortage is so great we decided to do it in this manner to help our families when they are getting no other help.  We posted a you tube link of an inspirational video that we did about corona virus for our organization, on our you tube channel. We are a program to  provide mobility not a program to lay people off while spreading the disease unknowingly

Families Especial  is continuing to give out medical and mobile aids that we do have on hand to be of service to the public during this pandemic.  The ministry of health just called and we gave them a half dozen walkers without any questions asked, because we know that the need is great right now and our workers who are most vulnerable have the gift to be protected by lock down in our foundation and so we must also find a way to gift people with a little bit of hope and assistance.  We are grateful that we do have a lot of walkers and canes and even an oxygen tank which can be of service.  We want to thank everyone for their support of our wheel chair workshop and to say directly we are not going away. We would prefer to be working actively to involve people with a handicap and helping people become mobile.  We have deemed helping through the wheel chair workshop to be an essential service and will find another way to wheel around these obstacles.    

We are aware that all over the world countries are at different stages in this virus, this dangerous unknown threat and we continue to keep everyone in the world in our prayers. A small prayer from children:  Dear God be good to me the sea is so wide and my boat is so small. Let’s all share our boats and our mobility aids to be safe, together.

Links:

• video on our response to covid 19