(UN)LIMITED TOGETHER
Sofie Hanegreefs // Roel Nollet// 2025 // 29 min
“They used to call me names,” says Patience. His back has grown crooked and he sits in a wheelchair. “You look like a frog, why do you walk so strangely? they said. These words hurt me, but here at school, nobody cares about my disability. We are all just a bunch of close friends.”
HVP Gatagara is an inclusive school in Rwanda. They have 1500 pupils, 50 procent of which have a disability. “At first I was afraid of them',” Edouard recalls, “I wasn’t used to seeing children without legs, but the school helped me to see things in another perspective.”
Patience and Edouard are best friends. Edouard wants to become a professional cyclist, and he’s very skilled at doing tricks with his bike. Patience’s movement is limited, but he is extremely smart and he helps Edouard to do his homework. Together they have unlimited possibilities.
“There is still a lot of prejudice,” Gaspard says. He works for Fracarita Belgium, an organization the supports the school. “There is this word in Kinyarwanda: "Ikimuga”. Literally it means ‘broken pot’. People use it for everything that is useless. Even for people with a disability.”
“Children with a disability need a lot of care,” says Sister Théonille. She coördinates a community center for families in Ruhango. “It’s costly. Not every family can cope with that”. She regularly takes a bicycle to visit mothers and their children with a disability, like Ernestine and her son Nobella. Her mother-in-law made her divorce from her husband because of Nobella’s limitations, and now she has to take care for him alone.
“I carry him on my back everywhere I go,” says Ernestine. “And although some people laugh at us, I want him to get the care he needs. Some people say they would let hem to die at home, because they have to work, but I can see the progress he has made already.”
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"you walk so strangely. you look like a frog”
/// PATIENCE /// Pupil with a disability at HVP Gatagara, Rwanda ///
