Dear friends and family,
I won’t pretend that this is not yet another fundraising initiative from me but I can assure you this time it has a different flavour. The difference is that there is no Oxfam nor even VSO attached to the end of it in a way that makes you wonder how your money has been spent. This time round, it’s going to fund my own work here, which you’ll see the direct results of, and whose player on the ground (me!) you already know and trust (I hope!).
So what is it I’m trying to milk you for? Well it is an idea that has taken about a year to come to fruition but which I see as one of the most concrete ways of improving livelihoods here. As you know, effectively Orthopaedics is more about saving livelihoods than about saving lives and with the challenges arising from limited resources, at times I wonder how much I can assist patients with my bare hands alone (and brains arguably). But with a tiny bit of investment, my input can really stretch a long way further. And that particularly investment is towards purchasing bicycle wheelchairs (tricycles) for people with both legs paralysed or amputated. Effectively, once they have been afflicted by the above conditions, they are often reduced to a fully dependent status. Unless they have a supportive family with the means to assist them, they can be truly marginalised with little means to sustain a living. Having a bicycle wheelchair empowers them almost like a new pair of legs might do. It gives them the means to mobilise further distances and engage in remunerated work (you often see them conducting small businesses around markets). Above all it also frees them from the confinement that comes with having no legs and resorting to using the heels of your palms to get about.
As I said, it took me about a year to suss out the logistics of having them made for the patients. In brief, there are only a few centres that build them as they need to be made to measure. They cost 400000Kwacha each, which is somewhere in the region of £160. It might seem like an expensive bicycle but it’s professionally made and is essentially an orthotic device which would cost at least 1 extra zero in the UK. So here’s my business plan. For any of you who have always been interested in assisting with development work but never trusted that their money would be put to good use, here is your chance. Any amount is welcome. What I’ll do is just give you my bank account details for the transfer. Then I’ll pool the money donated together and retrieve it here to purchase the bicycle. Any excess money will be used towards new patients, whom I’m always finding, or at providing badly needed wheelchairs for the hospital. I have 3 patients in mind to start with for now.
If you’re interested in this charity venture, please email me and I shall forward you my bank account details. Please spread the word to potential donors. I look forward to your assistance towards this project.
Yours thankfully (Zikomo Kwambiri)
Ashtin
ashtindoorgakant@yahoo.co.uk
Before
The Bicycle Wheelchair (tricycle)
After
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