The predicament of Uganda's Disabled Sport Talent

Rodgers Kyomukamah dreams of participating in the Paralympics one day. However, his reality tells a different story – that day may never come.
For years now, marginalisation of disabled athletes in Uganda has been eating into the country’s competitive edge. So much that last month, the Uganda National Paralympic Committee (UNPC) petitioned Parliament, vouching for more support for the nation’s disabled athletes.

“The government’s perception towards persons with disability is not good. The funding is inadequate and we depend on our partners just to get by,” says Bumali Mpindi, the president of the committee.

A few days ago, Parliament granted their motion. But with the Commonwealth Games just two months away and preparations for the Ugandan Paralympic front crawling at a snail’s pace – is it a little too late?

The answer lies with an old adage – success is always served to the better prepared, and unfortunately, they are not.
Kyomukamah, 25, disabled athlete, whose speciality is wheel chair basketball and power lifting, has experienced this first hand.
“I am not participating in the Paralympics this year because I’m not classified,” he says.

However, telling his predicament without sourcing out its roots does not give deeper insight. The best way to tell Kyomukamah story and dreams is to go back to the beginning.

At the age of two, while staying with his parents in Rukungiri, Kyomukamah was afflicted by polio and by three, his right leg was crippled.
It was at that time that his father passed on, leaving behind his peasant mother to look after him. Unfortunately, without the father, his mother struggled to sustain Kyomukamah since theirs was a poor family.

“I was sent to Kampala to stay with my brother George who took on my education and day-to-day care,” he narrates.

As he grew into the lanky bearded man he is today, he struggled on clutches at every task taken on, including failing to finish his diploma in Journalism due to lack of tuition.

By then, his brother had told him that he could not afford paying his fees any farther as responsibilities in his docket had overwhelmed him.

Pursuing a passion
Beaten into a corner with nothing to do, he resorted to pursuing his passion for sport, picking on his two favourite disciplines; wheel chair basketball and power lifting.

However, he was soon to discover that even passion in this life carried a cost, and one that he would grapple with to date.

“I do not have money to purchase standard wheel chairs or use the training facilities in town,” he says. “The total cost of a wheel chair is about Shs7m. So we improvised to cover the lack of proper training equipment.
“We had to borrow the wheel chairs from the National Council of Sports. However, they are not standard sports chairs since they are like hospital wheel chairs. They are difficult to use when engaging in the sport,” he explains.

In 2012, he reached out to the Uganda National Paralympics Committee for assistance for his training. Unfortunately, the body was suffering the same capacity woes, barely able to carry its own weight.

With an annual Shs10m funding from government intended for administrative and training costs, the committee that requires about Shs200m to run smoothly has failed to cater for training for its athletes on a countrywide scale – let alone in Kampala.Note that the 2013/14 government budget for Sport is about Shs1b.

“Training has been confined to Kampala. We are currently struggling to reach upcountry places because of limited resources,” he says.

Winning accolades despite challenges
However, despite the bottlenecks, Ugandan paralympians have fared well in international competitions.
A testament to this is the medal haul paralympians have accumulated through competitions.

They have won more than 40 medals in the region. In the recent Great Lakes region competition, they collected twelve medals; five gold, four silver and three bronze and at the All Africa Games in Maputo, two medals; one gold and a bronze.

However, these medals have been attained on the back of inadequate preparation and the brunt of success has mostly been cast upon the athlete’s personal initiative.

“The government only comes in to help at the last minute. I have always catered for myself the rest of the time,” says Mr Emong David (class T46 -1500m and 5000m), a disabled athlete who has racked in silver and bronze medals from competitions in Kenya and Maputo.

“I feel the government concentrates more on the able bodied in sport and doesn’t give us a chance, yet we are citizens,” adds Kyomukamah.
Another athlete who is facing the same challenges is Christine Akullo who won Gold for Uganda during the All Africa Games and represented Uganda at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.

“Training is hard. I’m in Amuria, in Soroti where I go through great difficulty because of not having enough resources and need support from different stakeholders to help me with training and preparation,” she says.

What efforts have been made
The number of persons with disability constitutes a significant portion of Uganda’s population. According to the 2002 Population Census, 16 per cent of the Ugandan population are persons with disability.

If this statistic were to be fast forwarded to 2014 where the population exceeds 35 million then we would be looking at a demographic of more than five million disabled persons.

The Uganda National Paralympic Committee is a corporate body, mandated with the management of Paralympics sports for persons with disabilities living in Uganda. It has 19 sports disciplines under its charge.

The committee that was founded in 1992 was formally accredited to the International Paralympics Committee in 2000. It is also accredited to the East African and the African Paralympics Committees.

They did this in partnership with international organisations like the International Paralympic Committee and UK Sport, along with the British Council that have stepped forward to assist disabled athletes in an attempt to achieve this goal.

“We recognise that disabled people, including those with specific learning differences and mental health issues, are disabled not necessarily through their own individual impairments or relative ability, but through common social attitudes, and physical and attitudinal barriers which result in marginalisation and lack of access to full human rights,” says Peter Brown, the British Council Country Director whose organisation has already put forward Shs31m to facilitate the activities of UNPC.
“We aspire to address this by consciously identifying and removing such barriers and making reasonable adjustments.”

The laws and policies of the land pertaining to people with disability are clear about the issue of inclusiveness and fairness; The Persons with Disabilities Act, 2006, makes provisions for the elimination of all forms of discriminations against people with disabilities and towards equal opportunities.

Similarly, the Business Technical Vocational Education and Training (BTVET) Act, No. 12, 2008, promotes equitable access to education and training for all disadvantaged groups, including disabled people and The Equal Opportunity Act, 2006, and the Employment Act (No. 6), 2006, both prohibit discrimination of persons in employment based on disability.

Unfortunately, despite the presence of bodies like UNPC and though the laws may be adjusted or improved on to suit the needs of disability sports, they will not serve to produce results in the short term which is the upcoming Commonwealth Games as most of these athletes preparations have not been up to scratch.

Lessons from other countries
In Great Britain, organisations have been set in place to deal with select disabilities and support the athletes by whatever means possible to ensure they succeed.

Examples of such are; British Blind Sport (BBS), which is the leading voice for people with visual impairments, Wheel Power; which deals with wheelchair sport, British Wheelchair Athletics Association (BWAA), (UKSA) Special Olympics GB and UK Deaf Sport amongst many others.

This is just one example of how people living with disabilities can be boosted to take part in sport, otherwise their talent would be for naught.
“We therefore hold that it is important to include persons with disability locally and internationally at all level of sports involvement, financing, management and oversight,” says the petition that was signed by Mpindi.

Nelson Mandela couldn’t have put it any better when opening the first annual South African Junior Wheelchair Sports Camp held in Johannesburg in December 1995 saying: “...We must see to it that we remove the obstacles ... whether they stem from poor access to facilities; poor education; lack of transport; lack of funding; or unavailability of equipment such as children’s wheelchairs. Only then will the rights of the disabled to equal opportunities become a reality”.

Maybe now that more people are discussing it, there might a silver lining for the dreams of Kyomukamah, Emong, Akullo and other persons with disability across the nation.

A paralympian shares his story of running with a disability

David Emong’s left arm was amputated 17 years ago. Despite this he is now a paralympian after taking part in the 2012 London Summer Paralympics in the 1500m race under category T46. He shares his story.

I am 24 years old and grew up as an active athlete, living what I consider a pretty normal life. At the age of 17, I was left physically disabled in one arm. One day, as I was playing with my friends at Abwong Primary School in Amolatar District when one of them pushed me.

At first I thought it was a slight push but after undergoing several test and medication to treat the injury it was discovered that my left was not going to be useful anymore. I was forced to take a one-year break from school to seek further medication but all was in vain.

My parents didn’t have the money to pay for the best medical treatment that might have allowed me to use both arms therefore I was left permanently impaired.

I started competing in athletics in 2004 but at the time I never took it very seriously. In 2005, I decided to go back to school but was afraid of facing negative reactions from my friends about my condition. My head teacher however, kept on encouraging me, saying I was a gifted child with a very special talent.

I broke the record at the school when I won the 2007 National Posts Primary (NPP) in Gulu, where I emerged winner, beating all the participants without disabilities.

I never imagined at the time that I would win any championship. That race had a lot of athletes with both arms and I expected them to win because you know when you have both arms you have a lot of strength.

I was inspired from there onwards and I decided to train seriously and compete in the Hoima NPP that was held in 2009. Surprisingly, I beat all the athletes again and won the crown. I wanted to bring more medals for my school but I couldn’t since I completed my primary education that year.

During my vacation I considered giving up on my passion of running. I was scared that I would join a school that doesn’t recognise sports people of my condition. Fortunately in 2010, I received a letter from Gombe SS, one of the best sporting schools in the country.

That year was the beginning of my athletic career because not only did I join my dream school but I was also selected to run in the Great Lakes championships in Nakuru, where I won a silver medal in the 200m T46 race.
In 2011, I was selected for the All Africa Games in Maputo, Mozambique and luckily I did not disappoint my country. I won a bronze medal in the 5000m race.

Everything that I went through was God’s plan and I am proud of myself. I have met people who look at my arm and wonder if I can really run but whenever they see me taking off they always lack words. I prove them wrong.

My biggest achievement was when I competed at the 2012 London Paralympic Summer Games, making me the youngest male Ugandan to compete at the prestigious event. I finished fourth overall in the 1500m race.

It was a great experience. Competing in the Paralympics was not a thing I had ever thought about, but that became a reality. The event opened my eyes because I met so many people with worse conditions than mine but they cared less about it and ran for their countries.

I raced alongside elite competitors from other parts of the world including Kenya’s Abraham Tarbei who won gold, Fikro Indeblu from Ethiopia, Algeria’s Samir Nouioua and Matthew Silcocks from Australia.
My achievements also won me a scholarship at Kampala University.

I did not make it for the World University Cross Country (WUCC) but that does not mean all hope is gone. I still have other big dreams to fulfill. I train with other normal athletes six times a week at Munyonyo but during competitions, we sometimes go to Kyambogo.

Moses Kipsiro has a big part to play in my success, if it was not for his support and encouragement none of this would have happened. He is my role model. I am looking forward to going back for intensive training with him and Jacob Araptany at Kapchrowa once I complete my diploma.

My bad moments also inspire me. I did badly at the 2013 IPC Athletics World Championships in Lyon, France.That event will never get out of my mind because I lost track 20 minutes to the finishing line. I am now targeting the Glasgow Commonwealth Games due June this year, the All Africa Games in 2015 to bag a gold medal and the 2016 Rio Paralympics Games in Brazil.

However, I appeal for support in form of equipment like shoes with spikes, a track suit, medical kit and financial aid to cater for food during the training sessions.

- As told to Jacinta Odongo