This story comes from George Hage and his team from Boise.  They met Ester during their last mission trip to Uganda this past summer. 

Ester looked beautiful that day, her tender smile, her reserved, but kind-hearted glances, her lovely dress.  We knew that dress was not her typical attire.  It would make it very difficult for her to crawl – her usual form of mobility.  It would soon become torn and soiled.  Ester has polio.  She had crawled on the ground almost all her life.  She would spend her days taking care of her 4 children, washing clothes in a bucket, cooking on the ground and cleaning her dirt floor hut. She admits to the pain in her hands, her wrists and her arms from lifting her body all day long. The only time she really left her home was on special occasions where she rode on the back of her husband's bicycle.

Ester and her husband were one of the first to arrive at the wheelchair distribution site in the Kumi District of northern Uganda. 

It was a 3 hour bike ride.  After the speeches were finished, the wheelchairs had all been handed out, and the prayers and well wishes were fading and it was time for us to leave, we noticed Ester sitting by herself in the dirt, smiling away. 

Her husband had packed her new wheelchair on the back of his bicycle and left to bring it home – a 3 hour return journey.  He would then travel back another 3 hours to pick her up and carry her back home on the back of his bicycle and complete the final 3 hour journey.  The entire time spent traveling on the bicycle that day was 12 hours!

It was a long day for Ester and her husband, but she was delighted.  Having spent most of her life on the ground, sitting there a few more hours to get her ticket to mobility, independence and freedom was no burden.  Ester just sat there quietly and smiled.