Bamwidhukire: Special Olympics connect sport and humanity

Abu Dhabi. People with disabilities have over time faced challenges of inclusion. Yet challenges abound for people with intellectual disabilities.
“These are people who sometimes appear normal until you interact with them,” Genevieve Bamwidhukire, the national director of Special Olympics Uganda, said in an interview after Uganda’s volleyball team picked their silver medals on Wednesday.
The Special Olympics serve the purpose of bringing people of the ilk for motivation and this year’s theme, “Meet the determined”, augured well with what these athletes can achieve. Bamwidhukire said that no research has been conducted in Uganda yet on people with intellectual disabilities although she identified Down syndrome, autism, alcoholic syndrome and cerebral paralysis as the main disabilities known in Uganda.
“Most research has been done on people with physical disabilities. And those are the ones that tend to get support from government and NGOs. We now want to study on intellectual disability in Uganda and provide livelihood for such people,” she said.
Her plan is to start at hospital level to register new births before rolling out a countrywide program.
“But in many homes, when they have a person with intellectual disability, they tend to isolate him. Those children live in a kind of prison,” she adds. Energy, goodwill and camaraderie have abounded at the week-long competition in Abu Dhabi among more than 190 nations competing in 24 Olympic-style games, feeding a sense that anything might be possible.
Bamwidhukire argued that to help develop the athletes, “inclusion is the rule not the exception.” Uganda won nine medals at the Games including four gold, two silver and three bronze.