PARIS (OIS) – Just three months after Solange NYIRANEZA (RWA) was born, her parents were killed during a robbery, leaving her 11-year-old sister to look after her and her brother.
They had no home, often forced to move from place to place. Sometimes, there was not enough money for food.
At five – after she disobeyed her sister and went outside to play with her brother and some friends – she fell and broke her patella.
“We hid the injury for one week from my sister as we were afraid she’d be angry,” NYIRANEZA (pictured) said. “When we eventually got to the hospital they tested my bones and told me I had bone cancer and had to amputate.”
At this point, her sister made a decision that saved her life, leading her to where she is today.
“There were some in my family who were saying that people with disabilities were not important,” NYIRANEZA said.
“They were saying, ‘Don’t take care of that girl. Take care of her brother. He is a man. He can grow up. He can do something which is better than that girl’. But my sister was fighting for me. She insisted she had to take care of both of us.”
Today, at 28, NYIRANEZA helps support her family financially as a member of Rwanda’s women’s sitting volleyball team, having discovered the sport while at a boarding school for people with disabilities.
“We were fighting to pay the school fees and my sister was fighting to get materials, soap, clothes and so on,” NYIRANEZA said. “I was lonely, but when I saw sitting volleyball I liked it. Then some people came to choose people for the national team (and) picked me.”
Her involvement in the sport was transformational.
“Without sitting volleyball, I don’t know where my life would be,” she said. “If you play, they can give you some money if we’re flying to different countries. I still live with my sister and I help pay the school fees of her three kids. Now we are fine. We are not bad like before.”
NYIRANEZA hopes her example can help change attitudes.
“Don’t look down on people with disabilities,” she said. “There are people with no disabilities who never achieve the things we do. Now I’m here in Paris. I went to Rio, I went to Tokyo, I went to different countries.
“I fly around the world, while some people have never even touched an aeroplane. We can do anything. We can rise more than others.”
Source: OIS – “Orphaned at three months, her leg amputated aged five, NYIRANEZA (RWA) owes everything to sitting…
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