Autism In Africa

Autism In Africa

Many African children with autism are hidden away at home – sometimes chained up, almost always undiagnosed. Efforts to bring the condition into the open are only just beginning.

The eight-year-old girl’s head droops like a wilted flower as she sits slumped in a wooden chair in her mother’s kitchen. Her wrists are swollen from the dingy white shoelace that binds them behind her back. The girl’s mother, Aberu Demas, weeps as she unties her child.

Earlier that day, Demas had arrived unannounced at the Joy Centre for Autism in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A single mother living on the outskirts of town, Demas didn’t know what autism was or if her daughter, Fikirte, had it, but she was desperate for help. Fikirte could not speak or feed herself, and Demas had no family or friends to look after the girl when she needed to work or run errands.

It had taken Demas several hours to get to the centre by bus. Because she didn’t have an appointment, she had to wait about three hours until Zemi Yenus, the centre’s founder, could see her. The centre was at maximum capacity, so when they finally met, Yenus told Demas she could only put Fikirte on the waiting list. Demas began to cry, and confessed that she had left her daughter tied up and alone at home.

​Yenus did a quick calculation: By the time Demas would get home, Fikirte would have been restrained for about eight hours, with no food, water or bathroom breaks. That was the end of the meeting: Yenus immediately drove Demas home to free Fikirte, and reassured the woman that she would make room for the girl at her school. Fikirte wasn’t the first child Yenus had seen in that state – and she wouldn’t be the last.

In the 10 years since then, Yenus says she has encountered hundreds of children locked away or tied up. Like Demas, many parents resort to these extreme measures because they have no other choice. Others hide their children, fearing stigma, which is pervasive in many parts of Africa and casts any disability as the sign of a curse.