Godfrey George tells the story of Bethesda, a church fully run and managed by visually-impaired persons
Tired, she moved closer to the shed for shelter, greeted the men and sat on the same bench our reporter sat on. He walked almost too briskly down to a nearby tap, filled an empty bucket with water and walked back up to get a pack of detergent. Our correspondent, who sat at the back, observed as they took their seats and giggled away with their friends.
The church pastor, Chimaobi Onyekachi, a visually-impaired man, who looked liked one in his 30s, mounted the podium thereafter and led a series of prayers. As he left, the choir sang a chorus. “My parents did not pay attention to it. They thought it was just a normal headache and body pain that would disappear with the disease, but the pain was too much for me to bear. Some days, it can be so bad that I would strip myself in search of succour because my entire system was on fire. In all, I noticed that my eyes were going dim by the day but I also felt everything would be alright once the measles disappeared,” Chima added.
“I could not see but I wanted to play with my friends. Once they saw me coming out, they would run away from me. My eyes were still open but you could tell that I could not see anything because it had become clouded with what looked like an extra film of flesh. Chima said after spending more than five years at home and having missed out on secondary school, he decided it was time to go back to school.With a little brush here and another push there, he was ready to sit the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination.
Chima said he would play it alone when everyone was in their rooms, practising simple tunes till he then knew he was perfect enough to play it to everyone else.Our correspondent watched in awe as he played the keyboard with dexterity, smiling and tapping his left foot as he did. According to the organisation, the incubation period from exposure to the onset of symptoms is generally eight to 12 days.
The Departments of Immunisation, Vaccines and Biologicals, and Child and Adolescent Health, in a 2004 publication, ‘The Child, Measles and the Eye’, noted that severe measles might lead to blindness in children.