Help Her See. Help Her Succeed: Shalom’s Story

Little Shalom sits on the veranda and listens to the sounds of other children playing. When the excited calls of the children become louder, she tries to join in to play… but she is ignored and instead knocked down.

Shalom cannot run to chase the ball. Everything happens too fast for her.

Her loving mother, Fridah, watches with sadness from inside their small, dark home. “She cries often and comes to me to tell me: ‘Mummy, they knocked me down.’ When other children who see will laugh at her and knock her down, I feel like I want to cry,“ Fridah says as she fights to hold back her tears.

Shalom has cataracts in both eyes, and began losing her sight when she was around three years old. Two years later, she can’t see the board at school and has been asked by the teachers to stay home until her sight has been restored.

Fridah can’t afford the treatment or the glasses Shalom needs after in order for her to see well enough to go to school.

Her voice thick with emotion, Fridah says, “She always tells me that she’s my nurse, and practices to inject me with small sticks that she plucks from our sweeping broom! I fear that if I don‘t get money to operate her eyes, she will not see again and she will not be able to work in future. I fear that she will stay at home and depend on others…”

A girl who’s blind in a developing country faces a very uncertain future. Without an education, Shalom won’t easily find work or be able to provide for herself or a family in the future.

Fridah simply says in a sad voice, “You know that when you are blind here, it is not easy to find true love.”