Feature story
The 31-year-old blind Greek Orthodox church member serves as the executive director of the Kenya Society for the Blind. And for two years, he has been a member of the youth assembly organizing committee.
“My specialization in the disability sector is meant to ensure that persons with disabilities are inclusively engaged, supported, and facilitated to express themselves in the assembly. We are trying our best to make the program reasonably accommodative to persons with disabilities,” said Waweru.
“I have also been informed that I am one of the youth advisors to the main assembly. I hope to advance….ideas that will improve the work of churches around the world.”
His life began in Kawangware, an informal settlement in Nairobi in 1991. At birth the doctor said he had a problem with his sight, but his mother—a single parent of three—kept the hope that this would change, based on the notion that babies develop some senses weeks after.
“In my case the wait spanned longer than usual, amounting to days, weeks, months, and years before proper analyses were given. My situation was worsened by the fact that awareness levels on how to handle a child with blindness were not available,” he says.
It was not until 1999 when doctors at Kenyatta National Hospital—Kenya’s largest referral hospital—confirmed his blindness. The news devastated the family, but it also turned out as a “silver lining” in the young man’s life. So, with reference from the Kenya Society for the Blind, Waweru got a space at a special unit in a public school where he started his education.
A turning point was in 2001, then at the age of 10, when he was introduced to the Greek Orthodox Church by friends while playing football. A priest of the church had identified him and, out of concern, the priest took him to several hospitals and specialists in hope of restoring his sight. When that proved impossible, the church decided to support the young Waweru to pursue education.
“The head of the church in my country always looked after me both in school needs and also spiritually,” says Waweru, who would later learn the church traditions and the liturgical order.
“I was very active in church activities throughout. It got to a point where I would braille some church texts so that I could use them during church services and especially chanting which dominates the Orthodox worship experience.”
All the time, according to Waweru, the motivation was the absence of discrimination in the church, which does not prioritize the healing of disabilities, but rather accepts the way “God creates them in his own image and likeness.”
Today, as the head of the Kenya Society for the Blind, Waweru works to help prevent blindness, and ensure the inclusion of persons with visual impairment, promoting training, education, employment, and the rehabilitation of the blind in Kenya.
Speaking about his expectations of the WCC assembly, the Orthodox Christian hopes that young people at the gathering can develop a road map to guide the future generation of young ecumenists.
“Young people form a great demographic portion in our society and yet they have been left out of key decision making table which tends to give solutions to their challenges. We feel that if only the youth can be included in important decision making forums of the WCC then the youth will really contribute significantly to the activities of the church, state and society in general,” says Waweru.