Blog 62. The Story of Apatawen. (A longer story than usual.)

Blog 62. The Story of Apatawen. (A longer story than usual.)

Apatawen came to our school in February 2023. His mother came to work with us as a volunteer. If only it remained such a positive story... (first picture)  

As everyone in the West probably knows, children with disabilities are often not accepted in society. The disability is said to be contagious; these children are the devil's; it is a punishment from God; they are witches; and whatnot.

This is the first time we have been confronted with it so clearly. And that's hard, very hard to understand! Especially when it is about such a fun and intelligent child as Apatawen.

At the beginning of 2024, Apatawen has been hospitalized twice. He has weak lungs and had pneumonia both times. When we came to visit during the second hospitalization, Apatawen was lying on the bed all alone. His mother was nowhere to be seen. She had gone home. Here in Ghana, it is customary for you as a parent to take care of your child when they are admitted to the hospital, you don't leave them alone.

Lumen Mundi paid for the medication and made sure he got food a number of times. During visits, he complained of hunger. After a few days, Apatawen is fortunately allowed to return home.

Then in March 2024, he suddenly stopped coming to school. He appears to have been delivered by his mother to his father in Kumasi. Detail: the father was not at home and she just dropped him at his doorstep. Fortunately, neighbours called the father....

The father has a busy job and he decided to take Apatawen to his mother in Sandema. Of course, we were happy when Apatawen could come back to school, so we went to pick him up at home. No one was in the house and Apatawen unwashed outside on a mat. He was so skinny that we were shocked. We made sure that he could be examined immediately in the hospital (second picture).

That same day we brought him a pan with food... much more than he normally ate, but he ate the pan half empty, at a fast pace, normally Apatawen is a very slow eater. (photo3)

During the school holidays, everyone from the staff went to visit Apatawen to see how he was doing. The second time I went, together with Godfred (because I don't speak Buili, we were shocked: Apatawen was lying on a smelly mat, completely covered in pooh! There was pooh everywhere: on his legs, his arms, his belly..... At that point, we decided to call the father and ask permission if we could take him with us. He was surely not taken care of.

He came to live with me, temporarily. It was exciting, but he soon got used to it, and many neighbour children came to visit very regularly. That was super! But in the end it became too much for me: going to school and taking care of Apatawen for the rest of the day. He can't sit or walk, so taking him to the market, or wherever, had to be done with a cando and was still a huge organization. If it wasn't for my 14-year-old neighbor, who did my forgotten groceries, or helped with everything else, It couldn’t have lasted much longer.

In those 3 months, the mother visited 2 times. Grandma and his aunt luckily came more often. Together with Richard we went to visit mother, who has remarried and is moving to Gbedema. When we got there we met an elderly lady and she said that the mother just left. She was going to get her. Mother was nowhere to be found. She didn't want to see us and stayed in her hiding place.

At that moment we decided to go to the Chief of Gbedema. A Chief makes binding rules, among other things, on a domestic level. The Chief's ruled: The man is married to the woman... not with the boy. Mother is fully within her rights....

So, Apatawen now lives with his grandmother again. We asked his aunt, a young woman with a baby, if she could take care of Apatawen. She was very excited, especially when she heard that she would receive 350 GH¢ per month. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that this lady was not doing anything: Two elderly women have told her that she shoud not take care of Apatawen.... Hor, her next child will be born with a disability! And everyone in Apatawen's environment believes that.

This is how far we are now. We still have some plans for the near future, but they need to be worked out first. In any case, we have decided to start building a house a year earlier than planned, so that children like Apatawen can grow up in a safe loving environment!

(And I am convinced that Apatawen can go to university, if he is admitted to the mainstream schools. Of course, I can't prove that now. But I know he's very intelligent!)