A good education is deemed by many people as a cornerstone to build your future life around. However, what happens when you can’t even access the education system? The stories below are not so much about physical access, as important as this may be. These stories focus on negative attitudes and discrimination.
A participant started this discussion by saying I have faced discrimination severally throughout my life, but among the many incidents that took long to forget and move on was when I had finished Primary School and was about to join High School. The school that I was admitted to and had sent me an admissions letter denied me the opportunity of an interview! This was despite me bringing all that was required in the admission letter. Consequently, I needed to re-buy the school uniform and such items for my next school. It put me down completely. I almost gave up on the idea of High School altogether.
Another person responded by saying, it’s so unfortunate that still today some employers cannot provide reasonable accommodation to persons with disabilities. The phrase we repeat again; “nothing about us, without us”.
A third participant recalled back in March 1977, I was invited to apply for a Secondary School teaching job in a High School. I arrived at 7.30am at the District Education Officer’s office. Being the first interviewee to arrive, I expected first hand attention - but unfortunately, I was kept waiting for over four hours! Eventually two members of the interview team appeared for the teaching job interview that I was also going for. Then one person stood up and ushered me out of her office without asking me a single question about what I had come for.
Little did she know that the young man she chose for the job instead of me, was my A-Level class colleague. The interviewees' final words to me were “You will be notified later in a letter”. So, with this deflated news, I returned to home where I continued my A- Level classes at High School from 1975 to 1976. Years later in May 1993, appointed as the Programmes Coordinator at the Kenya Society of the Physically Handicapped Coast Branch, I was invited to speak at a workshop and presented on the question “What persons with disabilities experienced in their homes and immediate surroundings”. It was organised by the Conference of Churches in Kenya whereby networking institutions and personalities participated and I happened to notice, among the distinguished guests, the female interviewer who felt that I had applied wrongly for the teaching job in 1977.
When I stood up and started presenting, she recognised me immediately as I touched on the harsh and gruelling conditions PWD’s, especially Children with Disabilities, are made to experience, even by very close relatives. She openly shed tears, most of which fell on the back of her disabled granddaughter who sat on her lap. Deep inside me I felt that I had proved her judgement in 1977 about my ability and performance was very wrong!
Secondly, I knew that she could be among so many of the guardians, parents, helpers, care givers of Persons with Disabilities whose tormenting behaviour I had hit very hard by my speech. She was one of the many distinguished attendees of the Conference who patted my back for a speech well done at the end of it!
I believe that although people take too long to accept positive change, it is very true that racial discrimination, colour segregation, has drastically changed for the better as can be compared with what it was during Martin Luther King’s time!