Children are a rare gift from God, a blessing received with thanksgiving, ululation and heartwarming smiles.
However, at times the joy is sullied when parents notice a disability.
Stories are told of how in the old days twins, the blind, the lame and children with any other disabilities were instantly killed.
But development and technology in society has resulted in change of mindsets and beliefs.
Despite disabilities, these children are flourishing at some of the country’s institutions catering for their needs.
A visit to St Giles School in Harare ushers one into another world of wonders.
It is a world full of genuine trust and friendship.
The school has close to 20 students and enrolment is still in progress.
While we sit in the office of the school head, a new student enters with his mother.
And the blind student ‘notices’ that there are visitors in the room and greets us, mentioning that the photographer is wearing a jersey that has the same colour as his bag.
The students at the school are high achievers who are not limited by their disabilities.
Tanyaradzwa Gondo, a Grade six pupil at the school, recounted his journey to the United States last year to play drums.
“I play drums, mbira, marimba, keyboard, piano, guitar and I also blow the trumpet,” said Gondo.
“So last year I went to America to play drums as part of the team from my school. I had a great time and the people who we performed for were very happy.”
Gondo says he is weighing his options as he believes he can be anything he wants to be but he prefers law, engineering, medicine or being a pilot.
The lively child speaks of the support he receives from his family, particularly his parents and siblings and the school as well as teachers.
He is a child like any who speaks glowingly of his friends, church, hobbies, favourite food and song which happens to be the popular Winky D’s ‘Disappear’. Gondo’s strong sense of smell and touch enables him to recognise people and do many other things.
He can easily detect the type of a mobile phone by sense of touch.
And his message to the nation is: “Disability is not inability.”
Similarly, six-year-old Chido Bwanya’s story is of happiness.
Chido likes ‘watching’ cartoons such as Sofia the First, Tinkerbell and Barbie and her favourite is Sofia the First with her purple dress.
St Giles school head Faith Sithole said support and care by parents to the blind children resulted in good performance and confidence of the children.
“We have seen some of our students excelling and making it to university level. Proper support and love enables a child to excel despite disability,” said Sithole.
“As a school we have tried by all means to provide Braille textbooks and material which are in line with our educational curriculum.
“However, sourcing the Braillers and other Braille material is difficult and we have to import. But stringent laws at the border are an impediment to the full development of blind children.”
Sithole said the school had adopted the 2014 resolution by Zimbabwe to introduce e-learning to every blind child.
The motto of the resolutions is: ‘A computer for every blind child’.
Against this background St Giles has purchased an embosser to complement the computers they use.
A Braille embosser is a hardware device for ‘printing’ a hard copy of a text document in Braille. A Braille translation software programme is required to translate the electronic text from the computer into Braille. Most Braille embossers come with the following features:
l Transcribe print text into embossed Braille output
l Speech feedback as you use the embosser
l Optical Braille Recognition Software which allows you to scan a Braille document and convert it to printed text.
l Braille Music translation software that will convert music notation into Braille.
2014 Statistics indicate that there are nearly 120 000 blind children in the country under the age of 15.
Zimbabwe has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) where it committed to align its policies and laws to the dictates of the international instrument.
The World Bank Report (1994) says that in order to cater for children with special educational needs, schools need to be provided with the full range of human resources necessary to deliver a full curriculum for all children through a combination of class teacher, specialist teacher, semi-specialist teacher, resource teacher, consultancy as well as ancillary staff.