PHOTO: (L-R) Visually impaired mother & her four children
By Moses M. Tokpah, mosesmtokpah@gmail.com
KAKATA, Liberia- A visually impaired and abandoned mother of four children residing at the home of the Liberia Christian Association of the Blind in Kakata City, Margibi County is making an SOS call for assistance.
Kakata is situated over 70 kilometers east of Monrovia.
Sarah Binda is calling on the Liberian government local and international non-governmental organizations as well as other philanthropists to come to their aid, as she has been abandoned by her husband due to her visual disability.
In local Liberian pidgin English she said: “Since I get sick, me and my husband wor there..I geh blind, he moved from behind me, me and my children them passing. I need help.”
Sarah, who is believed to be in her 30s, told this Reporter recently, that she can’t afford to send the children to school neither to provide food for them due to her current condition.
Explaining how she got visually impaired, Sarah said once she and her father went to collect cup lump (rubber) in Todee District, Montserrado County, when her eyes got blare, thus resulting to blindness.
“I was on the farm me and my ma them wor working, it just turn one morning me and my pa go on the rubber farm we were picking the rubber to come I was just coming na I was not seeing the road, all my eye just get like the way December dew can fall like that; all the place just white I na able to see na I tell my pa I say I na able oh, he can come way in front den I leave behind, that just the way it just started on me like that,” she explains in Liberian pidgin English.
She further said that as soon as she got blind, her fiancée abandoned her and the children.
According to Sarah, it was her father who was then catering to them. But unfortunately for them, he later died.
Additionally, the visually impaired woman disclosed that her children’s father is not showing any concern for the children adding that he does not call or visit them at all.
Sarah further noted that after she got visually impaired, she moved to a community in Kakata identified as Dennisville, but the area got flooded until she was rescued by a neighbor.
She mentioned that she and her kids thereafter, moved to the home of the Liberia Christian Association of the Blind where they currently reside.
Since then, she said, it is her jobless brothers who at times help her, while a youth organization under the banner, “Youth Movement for Collective Action” (UMovement) is supporting two of her children at the Salvation Army School in Kakata.
Sarah asserted that her oldest daughter, age 19 and her youngest son, age 7 are not in school, due to the lack of support.
They lack every basic needs including food and money to sustain themselves.
Meanwhile, the children of Sarah have expressed the need for well-meaning Liberians to give them the needed support.
Two of the kids, who are barely managing in school, said they go to school on empty stomach, most of the time without any recess money.
Patience Binda said she sits sadly when she sees her school mates having lunch during recess, while Mercy Sackie said she is not happy for her older sister and younger brother to be out of school.
Both of them are therefore appealing for material support such as books, book bags and shoes, among other things. This visually impaired mother, Sarah Binda can be reached on mobile phone #: (231) 880063461