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Mothering Faraja without remorse
2008-02-03 11:11:56
By Staff Reporter
Forty-year-old Elizabeth Emmanuel Sanka is a caring mother. ``Close relatives of my husband had insisted that I either abandon Faraja or kill him at his infancy. Oh God, I do not want to think of that,`` Elizabeth recalls.
``My neighbour had delivered a baby with an elongated head at the time I delivered my Faraja.
Doctors at Dareda Mission Hospital had advised us to go to Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre Moshi for further medical help, but she declined and I only learned later that the baby died. It is so painful,`` she remembers.
The mother who never loses hope keeps charming her second born Faraja. She has five children but it is Faraja who gets the most of her attention and she has a reason: ``God is so wonderful.
Nobody at our village would have believed that my son could be so intelligent even at school,`` she speaks proudly of her son who is in Form IV at Pugu Secondary School.
She also recalls the suffering she has endured and is still enduring over the disabled son. ``I always had to carry Faraja wherever he went. Close attention is what has enabled him to reach where he is, and he still needs it.``
Both Elizabeth and husband Amos Tluway put everything they could had on Faraja. The mother spent four months at KCMC hospital caring for him, without help from relatives of both side.
``Only my husband came monthly to visit us and give whatever he had. I am so thankful to Moshi women at the hospital who contributed to my meals as I was only living on porridge and ripe bananas for I had no money to buy anything.``
She becomes quiet and reflective, her eyes misting. When asked what she was thinking about, she responds that is the future of her beloved son.
``I know it is too much to ask for help, but I cannot raise 1.2m/- needed to buy the braces (pieces of metal joined together with a solder that has a high melting point).
Each brace costs about 600,000/- apart from related costs such as upkeep in Moshi and transport,`` says the caring mother.
Elizabeth is currently in Dar es Salaam soliciting financial assistance for Faraji who is due for his next KCMC clinic on April 3, this year.
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