Hope Spot 12 – When your walk is a wobble

you probably won’t remember this …

… but just before Christmas I told you how I’d ruptured my Achilles playing Pickleball.

Very embarrassing.

The specialist didn’t think it worth operating on an old bloke like me, and hoped my injury would magically heal on its own.

My Achilles had different ideas.

So, in a few weeks’ time the specialist is going to saw and sew and bolt and bandage and I will be moon-booting again for many more months.

In the meantime, my foot is basically hanging off the end of my leg doing nothing useful.

Which is OK in Australia, where we are getting much better at catering for people with a disability …

… but in Ethiopia, where I was 10 days ago, it’s a bit trickier.

Especially in the kind of remote villages where you work to help people through ALWS. Come with me now on a wander, and you’ll see what I mean …

They call this trunk across a flood-prevention ditch a ‘local bridge’.

I have little balance or rhythm at the best of times, so my LWF colleagues were worried at my wobble and bobble.

(LWF is Lutheran World Federation, our ALWS partner in Ethiopia.)

Once I was safely over, and my heartbeat had returned to normal …

… we made our way down a muddy track where I managed to step in more cow-poo than I had since I looked after my uncle’s dairy farm for a fortnight fifty years ago.

That brought us to a seedling nursery, owned and run by 7 teenagers, supported by our LWF team. The leader of the group told me the biggest threat to the seedlings were nosy cows and ‘little hippos’ (which I worked out later were wild pigs).

To keep these seedling-stompers out, the group had built a fence of barbed wire and local prickles …

… which you can see went to work on me.

A few days later we were taken to a closed-to-the-public 15 kilometre long cave network. It looked exactly like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I kept waiting for Harrison Ford to jump out from behind a pillar.

Unfortunately, only bats did.

As you can imagine, a pitch black, scrunched-down, gravel-grovelled cave is not the most sensible place for an old bloke on a walking stick to be.

I thought I was going to miss out.

Which is when something wonderful happened …

… I felt someone step in beside me and take my hand.

It was strange at first.

I didn’t know who it was, and I’m not a touchy-feely type person.

And it was very humbling to admit that I needed help.

But because I didn’t want to miss out on what might lay ahead, I let myself be supported and guided.

To have a once-in-a-lifetime experience that words can’t describe.

It was only once we got out into the light that I met my guide …

… Abdullah, a local Muslim young man (that’s him in the middle), who saw my need and stepped in to help.

Of course, you know what I am going to say next.

That this is what you do through ALWS, for people you don’t know.

It’s true, and I know the joy I felt at being supported to do something I couldn’t do on my own, is exactly the joy you give to the people you help.

It’s a privilege to walk alongside you.

Thank you for being a blessing, ALWayS!

PS: We’re working on locking away a 5:1 Grant from the Australian Government for our ALWS work in Ethiopia. I hope to be able to tell you more about this later in the year. Meanwhile, I thought I’d share these wobble-walk experiences with you because last Saturday we had our ALWS Walk My Way in Adelaide with 400 people stepping out so a child can step up …

… and next week we’ll be stepping out in the Brisbane Walk My Way, with a special focus on the children of Ukraine. Both Walks are part of our campaign to support 75,000 children with school, food and safety to give thanks for 75 years of ALWS service. I’ll hop off now! Thank you! 😊