Disability Recruitment Specialist ( Radar
Development Limited)
My names is Vincent Kaduma. I work for Radar
Development, an organisation dealing with formal employment for people with
disability. I am from Iringa ( Njombe).
My disability is a result of polio at the age
of four. Initially, I was sent by my parents to Mdandu Missionary hospital where
I was treated, but did not improve. With a suggestion from a family friend, I
was referred to Muhimbili National Hospital, where I went through an operation
and, later, physiotherapy. It took about 9 months for my full recovery. At just
over five years of age, I joined the Salvation Army primary school in Dar es Salaam,
one of the best primary schools in town, where I completed standard seven. The school
was for both disabled and non-disabled people. I continued with my secondary education
in Kilimanjaro region, and later took my first degree at an American Universtity.
Polio affects people in different ways:
physically, psychologically, and socially. Those who get polio come from
different home environments, go to different institutions for treatment and receive
different treatments. They also have different educational and social
opportunities and experiences. In my case, I never had a vaccination, nor was I
able to be treated in Iringa where I was born. I had to be transferred to
Muhimbili Hospital, where not only was I treated and recovered fully but had to
learn to walk differently with calipers and the use of crutches.
As a polio survivor, I describe myself as a “doer”.
I spend a lot of time taking care of others – family and friends. I realise
that challenges are inescapable and must be faced, and people with disabilities are not an
exception. Since people with disabilities live in a world designed primarily
for the able-bodied, I share the experience of negavite attitudes like other
people with disabilities. I consider myself fortunate, however, to have people
around me who encourage me not only to study, but also to aspire for good
things in my life within reach: things I can do that others might even envy. I
vividly remember I learned well the skill of playing the trumpet at primary
school, and others admired me for that.
I will never forget when I was in courtship
with my now dear wife, Tinah: a time when I realised how society viewed me as a
person with disability. The community did
not recognise my right to marry and have family of my own, and even my wife’s
family and many friends did not accept it. My wife went through a really hard
time: she was considered crazy for loving me. Comments like “how will she take
care of me”, to “kids born in your family will also have a disability” were
openly expressed to her, yet she stuck with me. Luckly, I had support from her
mother but, despite all effort to make them understand, some of our relatives did
not attend the wedding. I wanted all the wedding activies to end and take my
wife on honeymoon. Now, we have two lovely, handsome boys.
As a person with disability I have
experienced other challenges in the community by being considered as an object
of poverty to be given hand outs and being rejected at interview panels because
of my disability. I realise the main challenge is for me and others to tirelessly
make the community aware of disability rights and what disability means. Parents
who have raised children with disabilities well, like mine, must educate the
surrounding community.
To some extent, I consider myself as a
religious person, a Christian believer, mainly due to how I was raised and the
people who were my role models in my up bringing. Early on, I remember I met
one foreign Roman Catholic Padre, who really shed some light on my name. He
told me that Saint Vincent used to help others a lot, and that I could do this
one day by embracing the name. I haven’t reached there yet: I don’t have many
resources to help others, but I am trying to help with the little I have.
To some extent, I have reached some of my
dreams by being able to help others find a job here at Radar Development. It is
very challenging work. It is hard to find work for the able-bodied and worse
still for people with disabilities. I believe that if you want to help a person
with disability, give him/her work to do. What we have accomplished at Radar so
far is just a tip of an iceberg. I plead to the government as supposedly the
biggest employer to tap the forgotten potential workforce of persons with
disabilities in Tanzania.
My
advice to the community is that they take a positive approach to disability, as
the product of a social environment that is not willing to adapt to the
potential of individuals. People with
disabilities need to be included, placed in the midst of society through
schooling, work, and personal growth. I urge society to adapt to the diversity
of persons with disabilities, recognising that the disadvantages faced by these
persons depend on the discrimination to which they are subjected.
I thank the government for introducing a
piece of legislation called the Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010, signed
already by the President. And for being willingly able to sign and eventually ratify
UNCRPD.
I conclude by pleading to the disability
community to unite and not despair. We have long way to go, and so many
challenges ahead of us. Employment is a serious problem in our country. Should
we give up? Definitely, NO! I urge those in the forefront to help advocate
strongly for the employment of persons with disabilities in Tanzania.
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