Donor funding can evoke all kinds of emotions and misperceptions in people who have little or no knowledge about its purpose and how it works. MWEWA MWANSA describes how he helped rehabilitate a handicapped child using donor funds and her parents thought he was making a fortune for himself and they wanted their share. Read on…

IT landed on me in the course of my errand of mercy. In my outreach to children with special needs. The parents of children with physical or mental disabilities have a twisted mind about them.
Most of these parents think that these children are money-makers and that wealth should be accumulated through them.
This concept is not easy to overcome because it is normally very persistent among poor guardians and they do not understand that all monies donated by financiers should be accounted for through activities meant to rehabilitate and integrate the children into the main stream community.
In one instance, I gave  amounts of money to a pregnant mother to enable her child attend physiotherapy sessions, but immediately I turned my back, she went to buy baby cloths and nappies, abandoning the child the monies were meant for.
This parent and others remain hostile and acrimonious to volunteers who, like me, are focal persons to facilitate the rehabilitation of the children and account for every coin of the funding. They believe that millions of Kwacha are made through their children and that there is no need why they shouldn’t be beneficiaries of these donations.
Readers of daily newspapers may recall the wide coverage of a case of a Salesien priest (Catholic order founded by Saint Don Bosco) in Bauleni- Lusaka, who was dragged to court on the pretext that he sexually abused two physically challenged children and allegedly infected them with some sexually transmitted disease.
The priest was persecuted for months until he was acquitted by the court. A closer look at the matter, however, revealed that it was a hustle to control donor funding. In this case, the concerned parents and other members of the community wanted to remove a third party, the priest, from control of the donor funding from which they claimed he had enriched himself.
I was researching on this issue when a youth now a catholic sister, I have animated years earlier returned from the Phillipines. She confided in me that the trend of parents wanting a share from monies meant to rehabilitate children with special needs is rife out there.
The option to get closer to the fund is to continue coining Adolf Hitler’s statement “if you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”
It happened to me that one Saturday morning, I set on my journey to find a Grade five pupil about 11 years of age who was handicapped in one leg. I was tipped by a Good Samaritan who thought that I could be of help in the circumstance.
The girl lived with both her parents in a mud-brick house in an unplanned settlement called Zambia compound. It was a distance away and every time I had to check my direction with passers-by until I found the house.
On my first visit, I was welcomed by the lady of the house and during my second trip, both parents were home and they categorically refused to release their child, Blessings, for medical examination because they believed that having gone everywhere without success, nothing could change things.
Each time I arrived at their house I was panting because I used to walk about five kilometers in the  scorching sun. On my third visit, I asked for Blessings and I was told that the girl had gone down to a stream to draw water.
I decided to follow her and, luckily, I met her half way. She held her bucket of water in her right hand, in mid air and her lame walk caused the water to spill. I gave her a hand and that was a gimmick I used to convince the parents that, given an opportunity, this hard working girl could do bigger things in life.
Reluctantly, the parents agreed and I made my working plan immediately. I photographed the girl and I requested the services of a physiotherapist who physically examined her and confirmed with a high level of confidence that the child was likely to walk normally again.
With the documentation in hand I applied for funding.
I sent her to Beit Cure Hospital through the Kabulonga Cheshire Home in Lusaka. For two years, she underwent a number of surgical operations after which she was able to walk straight with no sign of any previous handicap.
When she was convalescing at Cheshire Home, she was looked after well and her recuperation was smooth as it was supervised by professional medical personnel. She was made to attend classes and at the same time helped to manage her surgical operations.
She was taught the usage of different walking aids until she walked again and she was discharged. She completed her Grade seven successfully. During the two years, her parents’ financial contribution was nil.
My clients from Cheshire Home in Lusaka are normally brought down to Luanshya at Dagama School of the Handicapped by bus.
This is where I would pick them up to Chambishi Mine Township for their school holidays or when they had been declared fit and discharged. In this case, I was early waiting for the Copperbelt bound bus.
And there it was; the children started embarking one by one in many cases with help from Catholic sisters, friends or parents.
Unaided, I saw Blessings confidently walking down the bus steps and when she saw me, several meters away, she stepped up her walk and then broke into a trot towards me with both hands spread in readiness for a hug.
I was shockingly bewildered; definitely taken aback by this miraculous act of modern medical science. I was there in disbelief yet she was there with her two legs.
I handed her over to my programme partner Grace who managed her junior secondary education for two years. The sponsorship involved the provision of school uniforms, shoes, books and the payment in full of school fees. This was not the only client we have had in four years and there have been so many intriguing cases.
Then, hell broke loose two weeks preceding the visit of the Bishop of the Diocese of Ndola at our local parish on the February 26, 2011.
Little known to me, a senior member of the parish approached one lady of the programme and poisoned her that she should mobilise her friends and demonstrate before the Bishop that my colleague and I misused monies meant for the children with special needs.
The demonstration failed to materialise because most people on the programme were non-Catholic and, second, all of them were satisfied clients. In a meeting I arranged with the parish priest with three of his assistants, a lady teacher spoke in my face that she was qualified enough to manage the programme as well.
My biggest fear at the time was that my good lady was managing a government basic school in the area and there was not a single child with special needs at the school. It was clear the idea was to wrestle the management of the fund from me and my colleague and that made us undesirable.
During the meeting there was no mention of the children in need.
Unruffled by the petty talk created by my fellow Christians, I planned for my routine visits to my children I have come to love over the years. I set off on my journey
to visit Blessings, and justifiably, I spent four years of my life to make her life easy.
When her parents let me in the house, and I could feel that something was not right and, as I sat down, they said to me with no shame in their faces “Mr Mwansa Mwewa, tell us, how much money have you made over our child Blessings?”
I was baffled, but I was little surprised. But then I thought that it was extremely illogical to want to keep the same monies that would have saved the child from her handicap.
Which reminded me of the English expression: “you cannot eat the cake and have it at the same time.”
Sarcastically, the good things I planned for the child have crumbled under the weight of parental ignorance and or selfish motives. I sadly released Blessings from the programme and she failed to go beyond Grade nine.
Since I had dealt with her for a long time, I could not resist being inquisitive about her life later on and I was not surprised to learn that she is a single parent at a very tender age. Oh! poor me I have yet to establish whether the community at large has a twisted mind concerning funding of this nature.
I will appreciate comments of similar experiences. E-mail: mwewasfomwansa@yahoo.com /0950932639/0964520853/0977681526
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