Thoughts...

Since I started understanding the world around me, I’ve known that Dhaththa was special. Not just because of the special care, love and affection showered on her, but because even at an early age I could make out the difference. She hadn’t been able to speak like the rest of us, but she had her own special ways of communicating and making us understand… I’d always been pampered by her, she was always ready with a big bear hug and smiles and a stern look and scolding when I was being too naughty… she was my favorite aunt…

There was a time when I thought there wasn’t much of an age difference between us, we’d gone to the same classes to learn quran and we’d study the alphabet together… and before long we were the same height, only, in a year or two I’d grown taller… I remember that she’d been taken out of the country for medical check ups quite often… that’s how I learned she had Down’s syndrome which is a medical condition which arises due to a genetic mutation; for which sadly, proper care is still not available in the Maldives…

There are many individuals with different levels of handicaps in our society; children with cerebral palsy, autism and many suffer from thalassaemias and haemoglobinopathies among others… talking to a Maldivian doctor not so long ago, I was told about a family in the islands with three of their only living children in wheel chairs!! They had muscle wasting of the lower limbs; a form of muscular dystrophy. Think of the agony such families will have to live with everyday… without proper care and facilities available too… if that wasn’t enough to deal with, there’s always the rest of the society, people stare when they see someone different from themselves, usually not with a bad intentions but sometimes these children are ridiculed, and thus they refrain from going out into the society and participating.

These children are also deserving of an education and equal chances to make it in the world as any other child…