Locked Away

The other day, as I was listening to the BBC (I start a lot of blogs this way, don’t I : ) and I was scandalized by the story of a young woman who was kidnapped as a child and then held captive in a basement for several years, enduring constant sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. I just could not understand 1. why someone would do that and 2. how she survived and stayed sane. When I was explaining these horrors to Sister Margaret, she looked at me with questioning eyes and asked, “Why did he do it?” I replied that I didn’t really know. “Hmm,” she said, “Did I ever tell you about the blind man at my last mission?”
She proceeded to tell me about a man who had become blind after finishing secondary school. Despite his brilliance in school, his mother felt ashamed of him (because of his disability) and locked him inside a room in the house where he remained for 20 years. Eating, sleeping, even the passing of waste was all done in this room as the mother cleaned the man and cleaned up after him. After the mother died, the man’s sister in law cared for him. The community at large was told that the man was dead. Sister Margaret found the man in an extremely weakened condition and brought him to a school for disabled children. There, he had trouble even sitting down for long periods of time. He learned Braille at the school, however, and began to strengthen his body. Now, he uses his braille to interact with others in the community and is no longer locked away. I thought of the man we visited who, through illness, had been in bed for three years and the woman, who, due to mental illness had not left her house, even to tend to the garden, for over two years. I also remembered the mentally disabled boy who spends much of his time locked in a dark room and his joy in seeing us. Ever present are the two local handicapped boys in town whose fathers sold them to the witch doctor for sacrifice (which means death by cutting and burning).
I then thought about so many of us “normal” people, who are locked into our 9-5s, not able to really think, explore, be creative, or even be. I have heard by now that I am independent and that I value freedom. I guess that, as I work for my own freedom, I am also passionate about the freedom of others, as we are all, in a way, locked in our own little basements and closets, no matter how lavish they may be.