A mother's plea for help for paralysed son
Pini Bothoko | Tuesday March 7, 2023 06:00
On arrival, one could wonder what could be the problem until Jimmy disclosed what pains her. She is raising her disabled son who spends his entire time lying on the floor of their dilapidated hut.
After greeting her, Jimmy could not help but share with the team the difficult task she faces when caring for Babelimi Jimmy, 30, who cannot do anything for himself.
Caring for an incapacitated child is the hardest job in the world as their caretakers are usually faced with a lack of support and Jimmy has faced more than a decade of a miserable life. Throughout Babelimi's childhood, the single mother of seven (five males and two females) devotedly cared for her son after he fell while riding a donkey at 15-year-old leaving him paralysed.
Looking at Babelimi’s physical appearance one would think he was in his teens, but he is 30.
“I am unemployed and struggling to feed my family because I am faced with the serious task of looking after my disabled son who cannot do anything for himself and has been in this state for 15 years now,” she said.
Narrating the sad plight, the anguished mother said, was one afternoon when she was with her late partner at the cattle post when Babelimi came home with his older siblings limping, they said he was stabbed by a thorn only for the situation to get worse until he got paralysed.
“That was the last time I saw my son walking. Currently, he is crippled and can barely do anything for himself. Then I took the situation lightly only to discover that he fell from a speeding donkey when the situation was already bad. I wish I could have acted on time and taken him to the hospital,” a heartbroken Jimmy said.
Parents of children with special needs tend to be faced with a continuous barrage of challenges from societal isolation, financial strain, and difficulty finding resources to outright exhaustion or feelings of confusion and this is the sad reality that the single unemployed mother faces.
“Since then I have not been able to do anything to bring food to the table as I was forced to be by my son’s side all the time. I cannot even plough like other mothers of my age. I survive with Ipelegeng that I occasionally enrol under to feed my seven children and seven grandchildren,” Jimmy said.
Asked what the family survives on if she is not enrolled under Ipelegeng, Jimmy said her disabled son is getting assistance from government with monthly food rations and that is what the family relies on.
Moreover, Jimmy pleaded for mercy and for anyone to come to their rescue and offer them support. She said her son needs a wheelchair because the one she was assisted with is damaged.
She added that her son has been lying indoors for a very long time now without going outside because his wheelchair is damaged.
“I am also pleading with anyone who can help us with better accommodation, even if it can be a modern one-room house because I am no longer active enough to raise money to construct a better house for my family. We all sleep in this dilapidated hut as a family and when it rains we do not sleep at all because the house will be flooding,” she said.