Dylan Bettencourt
When Anne Wafula contracted polio at the age of two, her village rejected her as they believed she had been bewitched.
Despite being abandoned by her community at such a young age, Wafula went on to compete at the Paralympics in wheelchair racing for Kenya.
“The villagers did not understand what was happening to me when I became disabled,” she told the BBC.
“Some thought it was witchcraft, some thought it was a curse from God. There was no concrete name they could put to my ailment.”
The village felt Wafula, who lost both her legs, had to move away from the village and she moved to Nairobi.
“They sort of decided ‘We do not want this to spread in the village’,” the 53-year-old said.
“So Mr Wafula should just give his daughter up to die but they didn’t want us in this village.
They tried to burn my dad’s mud hut down.”
The Wafula family took the decision to flee and move to the capital city.
“The community just lacked sufficient knowledge about the polio that made me lose the use of my limbs. I’ve always thought, if there was that awareness then they would have been more forgiving,” the athlete said.
The Wafula family remained in Nairobi where Anne went to university before becoming a teacher and meeting a man from the United Kingdom to whom she got married and where she would immigrate to.
It was after having her son that she discovered wheelchair racing while watching television.
“I was looking after my child, going through TV channels,” she said
“What captured my mind was when I saw these amazing women racing in their wheelchairs. The more I stared on the screen, the more I locked eyes with one lady. And I was captured, I was like, ‘this is what I want to do!’.”
Wafula then went on to compete at several major events including the 2004 Paralympics in Athens.
She also returned with her husband and her son beside her, to the village where she was first rejected, surprising the villagers.
“This is because of the stigma and the prejudice that when you have a disability in Africa you are not expected to find love, to have a child, to be someone’s wife, to be a teacher, to speak up publicly about issues that affect people,” Wafula said.
Image source: @AthleticsWeekly
