Hillbright helps physically challenged children
HILLBRIGHT Science Education College students in Mutare last week Friday put a little rainbow at the end of each cloud of the 23 children at Mount Olive located on the Clare Mission farmland in Nyazura.
The Friday marked the one day per year when every Hillbright college identifies a community of the less privileged to donate special gifts and goodies to. The day is called “Day of The Less Privileged”.
The 23 children at Mt Olive, most of them confined to wheelchairs owing to a serious and rare condition called muscular dystrophy come from as far places around Zimbabwe as Masvingo, Gokwe, Mtoko, Chipinge, Bikita, Buhera, Harare and Honde Valley.
Muscular dystrophy is a genetic disease that hinders normal muscle formation in children acute protein deficiency leaving them either literally stunted and or, most of them, badly physically challenged.
At the approximately seven hectare Mt Olive Muscular Dystrophy Centre in Nyazura there is a school and hospital managed by a special visiting doctor to ensure that the muscular dystrophy-challenged children are in the best possible state of health.
Speaking to The Manica Post last Friday, the country director Mr Samuel Chidavaenzi thanked Hillbright Science College for choosing Mt Olive to mark their observation of the day of the less privileged.
“I have no words appropriate to thank you. Allow me to pray and ask God to release abundant blessings to you in everything you do, including your education and examinations just around the corner.”
In his prayer he remembered to ask God to shower abundant blessings to the groups of community women who voluntarily come to cook for the children at the centre to wash their clothes and literally give them necessary motherly care for free.
“These wonderful community women visit the centre in turns and literally live with and nurse the children each group for one week before going back to their homes in the locality,” Mr Chidavaenzi revealed.
“And we do not pay them. The reason is simple. We just don’t have the money to pay them. But their instinct to volunteer love and care for these children is beyond human size,” he said.
Mr Chidavaenzi also revealed that Mt Olive is the only centre in Zimbabwe that cares for children with muscular dystrophy.
While everyone’s heart visibly went out to the sorry sight of the wheel-chaired children, including one Chihera who is nine years old in the body of a three or four year old, twin cousin brothers whose mothers are sisters and two girls who cannot do literally anything for themselves without help, the smiles on the faces of these sad faces and the music they sang spoke one thing: God is wonderful.
God’s people are different in every sense. Some of them are more on the hard and difficult side than others and they need the privileged to help them live a life as close to meaningful as possible. And God loves all of us.
May the office of the school chaplain, one Pastor Henry Tapu, enjoy all the credit for organising the trip to Mt Olive and inspiring the students to be filled with common compassion for a good cause.
We cannot say this without giving due thanks to the principal of Hillbright-Mutare, Mr Beau Machingambi, for allowing this kind of sense to prevail amongst the students and their teachers.
Amongst the gifts donated were tissue paper, groceries like cooking oil, fresh milk, rice, salt, sugar, beans and pop-corn. For hygienic upkeep there was bathing soap and washing powder and baby diapers.
Pastor Tapu thanked OK Mart for most of the groceries donated, parents and students for making the Mt Olive day of the less privileged a success and making the hearts of the students and teachers a sermon never to forget.
May the Lord bless Hillbright College! May its students and teachers continue to be a bright star that lights up the way for those who may be languishing and lamenting in both literal and metaphorical darkness.
And may God throw His abundant love and mercy to speak the miracle of joy-in-suffering and not-having on the children with muscular dystrophy at Mt Olive!