In 1995, we were delivered of a beautiful baby girl with a perfect Apgar score of 10 at one of the best hospitals in Abeokuta, a city in South Western Nigeria. The child, Toluwani was however diagnosed with Jaundice a few days after and the gross mismanagement of the case by the medical team inflicted a brain injury on her. This brain injury caused our daughter’s multiple disabilities such as hearing loss, mental retardation, speech disability, inadequate motor skills, and unbalanced limbs.
Toluwani’s disabilities marked a turning point in our family’s life because it basically defined the things we could do, the places we could go, the opportunities we could take advantage off and so on. Our lives became wrapped around this little helpless angel that the good Lord had given unto us. At the age of 4, we placed her in a regular private school, since we could not find any suitable educational program in the available school system. After two years of schooling, she could not read or write any number or alphabet; neither could she feed by herself or toilet.
On one fateful day after dropping her off at school; as I watched her walk rather clumsily into the school premises and knew it was going to be yet another wasted day, I broke down into tears and wept profusely, praying fervently that God would look upon the affliction of my wife and I, and find a way out for our baby. In my mind it was yet another wasted day in her life, since the school system had no clue on how to help her learn. She is mostly left to wonder the school premises. This sense of helplessness had driven me to tears.
In the summer of 2001, God looked upon our affliction and answered our prayers when I was appointed a Rockefeller Postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. From the moment my family and I stepped into the United States, things began to change for Toluwani. For the first time in her life, she was subjected to rigorous medical examinations which helped to clearly define the nature of her disabilities. Subsequently, suitable medical and educational programs were put into place to help attain her highest possible potentials. Today, Toluwani can read and right her name, can converse fairly intelligibly, can read at elementary level and does a lot of household chores. These are things that we could not imagine she would be able to do many years ago when we left Nigeria for the USA.
I held his hand, prayed with him and assured him that the God that answered my prayers is still alive and that even though God may not take his family to the USA as he did with mine, he will certainly bring USA down to Nigeria to help him and many other families that are suffering the same affliction in silence. For a child like this, a full time care facility would provide the needed relief to her parents to be able to live a more productive life.
I met another individual, who was advised to withdraw his then 8 year old son, from school because he was unable to spell or write his own name after a couple of years in school. Since then, he searched unsuccessfully for a suitable educational program for this child. We believe a child like this if given the required support through individualized educational program, should be able to read and write, just like Toluwani.
Another parent expressed their frustration on how the burden of taken care of their child had taken away a lot of their valuable lifetime. It was very difficult to get people who are willing to provide adequate care for such children during the day when the parents should be at work.
In 2006, when I resumed duties at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta in Nigeria, after 5 years in the USA, a junior colleague walked into my office and told me how he and his wife had heard about my daughter’s case and the progress she was making in the United States, and had been looking forward for an opportunity to meet me to seek for advice on how to get their disabled daughter to the USA. His daughter, who was 5 years old then, was unable to sit, walk, talk, or feed herself. Like my own case, she was also a victim of medical malpractice at the time of birth, this time in a hospital situated in Ilorin, a city in north central Nigeria. He told me how the past 4 years have been like hell for his wife and him, how their life has come to a standstill because of the care of this child and how they have now come to their wits end on how to continue to cope. As I listened to his story, I was close to tears because I remembered how I had wept profusely 6 years prior at the gate of my own Toluwani’s school. The same pain and thought of helplessness I had then was clearly evident in his voice.
The unfortunate thing is that these troubled families cited here are not isolated cases. Injury to children before and after birth is rampant in Nigeria due to grossly inadequate health care facilities and many families in Nigeria are currently subjected to this kind of torture, without any form assistance from the community or the government.
Based on this and many other pathetic cases we knew about, my wife and I had a serious discussion and decided to start a program that will improve the welfare of these children and bring needed relief to their families. We got our final motivation from the word of God in 2 Corinthian 1: 3-4: “ Blessed be God, even the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God”. Consequently, we took practical steps to set up the “Toluwani Special Needs Center” with the mission to provide full time care which include residential and day care services for children with multiple disabilities. Our goal also includes the provision of the environment for family networking, child advocacy, and individualized educational programming.
After keeping his son with us for about one year, a parent confessed that he would have accomplished much more with his life if the type of services provided by the TSNC had been available to him few years back.
Dearly Beloved Reader, this is a very expensive project and requires lots of resources to implement successfully. We believe that God can use you to meet the needs of these special children and their overburdened families. If you feel inclined to sow into this project, kindly follow the link "Support for TSNC" to make a donation to be a part of this work.
Thank you for reading and remain blessed.
Adebayo and Simisola Aromolaran.(Founders,TSNC)
