New Internet connection in remote part of Kenya used to educate others about needs of disabled children

From a New York Times story about getting the Internet into remote parts of African countries. The story mentions how it is being used for the disability community. In the picture, Kenyan Julius Kasifu uses the Web to raise awareness of disabled children.

Entasopia, Kenya, is the last place on earth that a traveler would expect to find an Internet connection. Yet it was here, in November, that three young engineers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, with financial backing from Google,
installed a small satellite dish powered by a solar panel, to hook up a handful of computers in the community center to the rest of the world.

Julius Kasifu, 40, is using the Internet to try to help others. His family runs a farm, but because his legs were crippled by polio as a child, he was limited in the farm work he could do.

In Masai society, he said, disabilities like his were seen as bad omens. Traditionally, disabled newborns were abandoned and their mothers were put through a ritual cleansing to banish the evil spirits that were said to have caused the disability, while the place where the birth took place was burned. Even now, such children are often kept hidden away in the family manyatta, a wattle-and-daub hut.

Mr. Kasifu is leading a campaign to raise awareness and to build a shelter, called Tuko, for such children. With the Internet connection, he has been able to upload a short video about their plight.

“The mothers come to me and say: ‘Have you got a place to take our children?’ ” he said. “It hurts, but what can I do? Out of that hurt came this project.”