Question: Various disabled people in Arusha have been praising JM Tours for the support you’ve been giving them. Do you provide the humanitarian assistance as a company or individual?

Answer: Actually I do it as an individual, driven by compassion and knowing that, physical or mental handicap has never been the person’s fault. I usually grant them the kind of assistance that I personably can afford. However, some of our tour clients also happen to be disabled and these normally like to visit their local counterparts and most of them like to support disabled people here.

Q: How does JM Tours handle these disabled tourists, for example the deaf and blind?

A: Our drivers are very familiar with the sign languages besides, I personably served at Church once and have been meeting such people and therefore got used to them.

The real concept of tourism is to bridge the gap between people of different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles.

Our tour company is 20 years old now, receiving quite a number of visitors from churches abroad. In fact, we have good relations with European Churches and those in Tanzania.

When you work with religious groups, you get a chance to receive both privileged and underprivileged groups and we’ve been getting disabled tourists since the early eighties so we are quite used to them now.

Q: So far how many handicapped people have you been supporting or assisting?

A: Many, but it is not only the handicapped ones, but also even those with various personal problems. I have their files here since many of them write to me.

However, I haven’t been able to assist each one of them due to limited funds. I think, each person who has been blessed by God needs to extend a hand of assistance to others.

If we all manage to play our parts, the common social problems of thefts, drug abuse and other vices, will highly be reduced.

Q: How do you assist handicapped children?

A: I pay the salaries of teachers who train deaf pupils at Meru primary school. You see, since the establishment of the deaf department at the school, there was a scarcity of such special teachers. Most trained teachers can not teach deaf pupils or even understand sign languages, so I had to bring in special teachers from Mwanga, in Kilimanjaro region to train the pupils.

Q: Any problems affecting disabled people’s development?

A: There is only one which is outstanding. we don’t have enough special centres for them, as part of our community, they also need education but theirs must be special and if educated,

they are all capable of being self reliant.

Q: From your observation, how does the local society treat this group?

A: At least nowadays, parents take their disabled children to school. In fact, all special handicapped pupils’ centres are now full, some even attending school in sessions.

At this rate, we expect some progress, our counterparts in developed countries do not conceal their disabled children, but let them have their well deserved educational privileges.

By Nyamanoko Bwire - Arusha Times

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Posted by : jmtours

July Tue, 2010

This is good!

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