Ishmael Tchale Can Dream Great Dreams
Mwale Village, Malawi… The new school year is beginning, and children in western nations often start it with moans and complaints. For them summer is over, and it is time to get up at the break of dawn, gather up their homework, and head out the front door toward the school classroom.
In tiny Mwale Village, Malawi 10-year-old Ishmael Tchale is not complaining about going to school. In fact he is excited with the opportunity. He was disabled by malaria when he was a young baby. Like most Malawi children he loves to go to school. There they learn and grow and have the opportunity to move into good jobs as teachers, business people, medical people and other areas where they can raise a family in a better environment than their parents have been able to accomplish. Education is their only hope for a better future, and like his friends, young Tchale is aware of this fact. Too, he likes to go fishing with his friends at the river near his home, but with his condition he has been unable to do either of these. There can be no dreams for a crippled boy in this impoverished nation of 13,000,000 people. Over 90% of the people live in tiny, remote, mud-hut villages, and the average income means the village family of a child like Tchale will not earn enough money in their entire lifetime to be able to purchase one single wheelchair.
But now all of this has changed, thanks to the arrival of 550 wheelchairs to Malawi, from the Free Wheelchair Mission, and Malawi Project. Ishmael is the proud recipient of a nice, new, shiny all terrain wheelchair. Now he can go to school every day, not just on the days when someone would carry him the 2.5 kilometers to the school. Now he can dream great dreams about his future. Now he can go down to the river and fish with his friends. His friends are happy too, since to have him with them while they fish they do not have to carry him on their backs.