Mother of 11 visually-impaired children speaks about her suffering

An elderly woman of 11 children, all of whom are visually impaired, has shared her story of how she has managed to care for them over the years.

Agnes Nespondi, a Kenyan, told Afrimax English that the bizarre visual impairment started with her first child and she thought that the other ones would be fine, but her hopes became a mirage.

She narrated how she took her first child to a children’s hospital for treatment but was told that the child’s condition was irredeemable.

Hoping to have a child without a defect at all costs, Agnes continued getting pregnant and giving birth to more children up to 11. She recounted how before the birth of each child, doctors assured her that the scan results didn’t detect any defects, but the children strangely become visually impaired right after birth.

Taking care of the eleven blind children was no mean a task, but it was easier when her husband was alive. He, however, unfortunately, died in 1994, leaving her with the responsibility of fending for herself and the visually-impaired children alone.

She enrolled them into schools hoping that they would become useful in the future, but they had to drop out because of the difficulty of having to study in the same space as other pupils with no disability.

Most of the children are grown but as they don’t work, their only source of livelihood is begging for alms in the streets.

Agnes’s fear is that as she is ageing, with death inevitable, she might not be able to take care of the 11 visually-impaired children and there would be no one to fend for them.

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