A Prosthetic Leg for Deo Kundi

 

At Central Middle School, we (Solana, Lockie and Lauren) held a fundraiser to help buy Deo Kundi a prosthetic leg. He has been without a leg for 3 years. To raise the money, the three of us decided to hold a bake sale at our school. We went to Thrifty’s to ask if they would donate some ingredients and they gave us a huge sack of flour, 3 dozen eggs, butter and chocolate milk. We then went to Starbucks to see if they would donate some paper cups for the chocolate milk. Many nights were spent baking and decorating cupcakes, gingerbread men, haystacks, shortbread, banana bread, fudge, and cookies.  When the day of the bake sale came we brought everything to school and we set up at table at the first recess. When the bell rang there were swarms of kids around our table, with amazing sales! At the second recess, we set up all of the baking we had left, and almost sold out. We set up again the next day with the small amount that we had left. At the end we had a bit of baking left so we gave it to the staff working in the office. We made $305 at our bake sale and Sasha (Lockie’s brother) made $275 at a bake sale he held last year. We want to say a special thanks to Thrifty’s and Starbucks for donating ingredients and paper cups. We would also like to thank Quinn and Cameron for helping us sell our baked goods, and all of the kids and staff at Central Middle School for supporting our fundraiser.

-Lauren

 

We were all pleased to hear that our wishes were granted and we were able to collect and fund raise more than enough money to pay for Deo’s prosthetic leg. We were extremely lucky to have almost all of the parts of the leg donated by a local prosthetic specialist in Victoria B.C.   A big thanks to Geoffrey Hall of  Custom Fit Prosthetic s!   With our fundraising, we had enough money to cover the additional costs of the plastic leg cover and stocking, and the transportation for Deo and his father to KCMC (a hospital in Moshi). Our very first meeting with Deo was at his house in Kyrua. On the day of our visit, our group caught two taxis into the village, looking out our windows as we passed several primary and secondary schools – all preparing for the new semester starting on January the14^th. We passed many people walking in the dusty road as we continued on our journey to Deo’s “shamba” (farm). We had a bit of trouble finding our way to his driveway –maybe because we were so focused on the women dressed in beautiful African fabrics walking by our taxi, probably making their way to church. After a lot of backing up, stopping and slowly moving forward, we saw Deo up ahead – standing on crutches at the side of the road awaiting our arrival. Once we were at Deo’s house, we immediately met his family, each one of them giving us a warm welcome to their shamba, besides the three little children in a bedroom enclosed by a sheer green curtain, giggling at our every word. We soon got down to business about the leg.  We had the donated leg parts with us in a canvas bag. We showed Deo and his family the leg and were able to snap a few photos of the foot and the other parts with Deo, before we began talking about  the logistics and details of the whole process. It was decided that the following Thursday (the 16^th) we would all meet at KCMC for a meeting with Prosper, the head prosthetics technician, to talk about the costs and for Deo to have a fitting/molding for the prosthetic leg. We gave Deo 20,000 Shillings (around 18 Canadian dollars), for him and his father to transport themselves on the bus to the hospital. Through the constant smile showing on Deo’s face throughout our conversation, I could tell that he was very happy and felt grateful to be able to get a prosthetic leg.

-Solana    

Think of clambering over streams, loose rocks and other obstacles of the foothills of Kilimanjaro with crutches.   That’s what Deo Kundi must do as an above-the-knee amputee. Deo lost his lower right leg in a lava rock mining accident at the age of twelve. Now he is 16 and has not had a leg in over 3 years and has been using crutches ever since.  Because of that he has needed to be boarded at Lombeta school where he is sponsored by Kilema Support Fund Tuiton Project.  We first met Deo when we lived at Kilema in 2007

 This year, arriving in Moshi after our dusty safari we jumped right in to find a contact at KCMC outpatient orthopedic centre. We arrived to an empty clinic with a couple of doctors and met Prosper, the experienced head technician who had already known about Deo. We talked about costs, got Prosper’s phone number and talked about further appointments We figured that with all of our fundraising at school we could probably cover all the costs.

 Our next visit to KCMC was a week later after we had visited Deo and his family at their shamba and passed to them the donated prosthetic leg parts we carried from Canada. We met the waiting Deo and his father outside the YMCA and we cramped into 2 dala dalas with feet and butts out the door. We were standing up and lurching backwards as we sped up and lurching forwards as we stopped. We arrived at KCMC to meet Prosper and further discuss prices. We ended up paying only 600,000 tsh (about $420 cdn) for the molding and casting, but it was the contribution of the artificial leg worth about 2.5 million tsh ($1750 cdn) that made  giving him the leg possible.  While we waited for the casting doctors to call us, Deo and I flashed back to when Sasha had been with Deo at KCMC to get his first  artificial leg 5 years ago. That one he now had grown out of.  Together he and Sasha had drawn houses and played tic tac toe and we ended up playing tic tac toe also.  Their drawings were still in my mom’s notebook from that time and we all laughed to see them.  Finally in the casting room Deo was examined by orthopedic staff and they put on a sock over his lower half and commenced putting casting around the stump until it hardened in to a solid cast of his stump. The process was very fast and took only around 20 minutes. After the appointment Prosper said we were to return on Monday to do the next step. The smiles on the Kundi faces, father and son, were the happiest moment on the trip so far and I can see why.

Lockie  Fraser