Pastor Who quit the altar 16 years ago to look after mentally retarded and disabled kids
As a pastor, Rev.
Okon Usuyak, like many have, might have fallen into the temptation of channeling
his effort towards getting rich. However, unlike some of his financially-propelled
colleagues who man the altar like a business empire, he gave preference to the
will of God in the affairs of his life. It was therefore not surprising to
discover that despite the evident difficulties, Rev. Usuyak quit the altar 16
years ago to answer to a greater calling.
For the past 16
years, Rev. Usuyak has spent everyday of his life with children most parents
would rather not have.
In a chat with SLAPSnHUGS, he told the story of how he
gradually started with nothing to establish the Family Vocational Institute for
Disabled (FVID) children. The institute presently looks after 58 mentally
retarded and disabled children.
“I was a pastor
but without any premonition, the calling came and I had to answer to the will
of God. God directed me to set up a special school so that special people can
be trained because many special people are wasting away. They are wasting away
because there is no good upbringing or training in their life. I summoned
courage to start the institute. It was very hard in the beginning because I
didn’t have a kobo. I even owed rent in the house I was living. I spoke to a
friend, Olufemi, who was a blind man. He’s late now but he was a pastor back
then. He traveled a lot and was very successful. When I spoke to him, he
accepted to take the responsibility but he failed to keep to his words. I had
serious accommodation problems.”
With no one else
to turn to but the Lord, he started on his own. He eventually got a one-room
apartment but never anticipated the sort of difficulties he ran into. “It
wasn’t easy because I started with just one room. The room was here in Agbado
but there was a very big problem there. When I bring blind people to that one
room, pregnant women would always start shouting on me saying I’m was planning
to make them deliver blind children. This was always the case every time I
brought home someone with one arm of one leg. Back then, it wasn’t a deaf
school. That was the major problem I was faced with back then.”
Faced with this
problem, relocation became imperative. “I had to work extremely hard to get
money to rent a self contain apartment. I started February 1, 1996 and succeeded. By October, I
was able to pack from the one-room in Agbado to the self contain apartment
where I lived with the disabled.”
As expected,
another brick-wall emerged as he soon discovered that most of the disabled had
no appetite for any academic endeavour. “I was having problems with the blind
people as well as the physically handicapped people. The problem I was having
with them was that the orientation was wrong. I would always go to the street
where they are begging to try to recruit them to come and study. Most of them
always told me that they are not interested in studying. They told me point
blank that they are in Lagos
for business and even added that they had families at home to cater for. Some
of these beggars were from Ghana,
Niger,
Togo
and just came to Nigeria
to beg. Many of them even came from the north. The problem was that whenever I
succeeded in bringing any one of them to the school, within two or three days,
they would go back. They insisted that I had to pay them first if I wanted them
in the institute. It wasn’t easy at all.”
For the Reverend, succor came at the appointed time. Contrary to the
previous encounters, what he wanted came to him. “When I rented the apartment
in Oct 1996, by January, a man walked up to me saying he had a deaf girl. I
simply asked him to bring the girl to me. The following week, a woman walked up
to me and said she had a deaf boy. I also asked her to bring him. By that time,
I had a sign post. After having two deaf children, I decided to get a deaf
teacher. One of the deaf children saw a deaf girl passing and told the teacher
and me that the girl was deaf. The teacher and I went after the deaf girl. We
caught up with her and she took us to another deaf person. This other deaf girl
took us to another deaf person and they kept linking us up. At the end of the
exercise, we were able to get 10 deaf people within January 1997.”
He started as a school
for the deaf in 1997 and has been operating as one since then
SLAPSnHUGS sampled the impulse of some of the parents. Fifty-two-year-old Mrs. Otibamowo has
a 9-year-old daughter at the institute. She painfully reveals that her daughter
wasn’t born deaf or dumb. “I brought her here three years ago. She used to be
okay but had measles two years ago and the problem started since then. She
became deaf and dumb. She now uses sign language. I still believe her miracle
will come and she’ll talk again.”
Another parent,
Mrs. Adeyemi Yemi, 32 from Osun
State says she brought
her 15-year-old daughter to the institute following her former teachers’
advice. “She used to be in a private school but she wasn’t getting along. Her
teachers advised me to bring her here. She’s deaf and dumb. She had measles when
she was one and half years old. She has been improving since then.”
Mrs. Toyin
Bamgbopa, 35 also from Osun
State told SLAPSnHUGS that her 12-year-old daughter
has been at the institute since she’s been three years old. “When she was three
months old, we just realized that she didn’t respond to sound or make any. The
day it started, she screamed from her sleep and has never spoken a word since
then. We use sign language in communicating with her and we believe God will
still do wonders and make her talk again. We’ve not lost hope in the Lord.”
I had this chat with this Reverend and would like to know what you feel he deserves - a drum of hugs or a carton of slaps?
Source: My ARCHIVES
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