I was paralysed in a road accident — my fight for accessibility led to a very dangerous deal

The child's wheelchair tipped so suddenly that his mother screamed before anyone else moved. I was metres away, seated under a campaign banner with my name printed beside theirs, watching a cheap ramp buckle in front of families who trusted me. That was when I knew the organisers had asked me to sell danger.

We were in Nyeri for a public outreach event, and a regional non-profit was presenting its new accessibility programme as the breakthrough I had prayed for. They wanted expansion, visibility, and donor interest. They also wanted my face beside theirs because families in Thika, and nearby towns already remembered my work.

Then little Baraka rolled onto the trial ramp.

The plywood bowed. One wheel jerked sideways. Baraka's mother lunged and caught him before he hit the concrete. Volunteers grabbed the chair. The crowd gasped. I gripped my armrest so hard my fingers cramped.

No one checked the bolts first. No one stopped the demonstration after I raised concerns that morning. And when the near fall happened, the coordinator beside me did not ask whether Baraka was hurt. He leaned in and muttered, "Ni tukio dogo tu. Tunaweza kudhibiti ujumbe."

Manage the messaging.

A week earlier, they had placed a contract in front of me in Thika and asked me to endorse unsafe vans, unstable ramps, and a rushed rollout dressed up as progress. I had kept telling myself I still had time to decide.

Watching that child nearly fall, I understood that the decision was already here. If I signed, I would not be expanding access. I would be helping dangerous shortcuts enter communities that trusted my name.

My name is Juma Otieno. Before the accident, I lived an ordinary, mobile life between Nakuru and Nairobi, taking freelance design jobs and treating movement as something too basic to notice. That rainy evening on the expressway, a lorry skidded, our driver swerved, and the van exploded into shards and twisted metal.

I woke in a hospital in Naivasha with a spinal injury and a body I no longer recognised.

The months that followed were not dramatic in a cinematic way.

They were slow, repetitive, and humiliating. I learned how to transfer from bed to chair. I learned how heavy a bathroom door felt when balance had vanished. I learned how to ask for help without sounding ashamed.

I learned which visitors could meet my eyes and which ones spoke to the person beside me as if I had disappeared.

When I moved to Thika to stay near my sister Wanjiru, even a short trip to buy toothpaste became a puzzle. Which route had usable pavements? Which driver would wait long enough for me to board? Which building had a ramp too steep to be safe? I stopped saying yes casually because nothing was casual any more.

What unsettled me most was the isolation. My world shrank to rooms, routes, and routines. A few people passed me phone numbers. A cousin added me to an online group. One parent knew where to get a cushion at half the usual price.

Another had spent years fighting to get his son into a school building with stairs and no lift. We began by swapping survival tips. Then we continued talking because the same failures kept showing up in every story.

Those conversations led to small meetups in borrowed halls, church halls, and community social halls. Initially, we shared advice on transportation, skin care, school access, and disability support paperwork. Then we compared patterns.

Accessible transport was rare. Support programmes were inconsistent. Transport providers rarely offered accessible options. In city after city, leaders treated access as a favour, not a right. The more I listened, the harder it became to stay still.

The first meetup I organised had only nine people, and three had to be lifted over the entrance step because the venue owner insisted his place was already accessible. I went home angry, ashamed, and more determined than before.

The next month, we had fourteen people.

Then twenty. A mother from Ruaka brought her daughter, who had stopped going out because of a broken pavement near their home. A retired teacher from Kiambu arrived with pages of transport complaints. A student from Nairobi admitted he had begun missing classes because the footbridge near campus was impossible to use after it rained.

Each story tightened its grip on me.

I began spending my days on calls, messaging, and site visits. I requested community spaces. I met school heads, transport operators, and local gatekeepers. I drafted simple guides on home adjustments, travel planning, and wheelchair care. I thought I was building a support circle. Instead, I became the person people called when they were tired of being ignored.

The first real hurdle was space. Places that claimed to welcome us often had steps, narrow toilets, or sloping entrances that became dangerous in wet weather. More than once, I arrived early, checked a venue, and had to start again from scratch.

The second hurdle was authority.

Men behind desks praised the idea, then told me to return with another letter, another stamp, another approval from someone who never seemed available. The third hurdle was my own body. Travelling across Nairobi in heat, rain, and traffic left my shoulders aching, but cancelling felt like betrayal.

My family saw the cost early. Wanjiru watched me come home with folders on my lap and said, "Juma, unajimaliza. Huwezi kubeba kila kitu." Juma, you are running yourself dry. You cannot carry everyone. My friend Brian said I was spending money I didn't have on people who would never get proper help.

He was partly right. My savings dwindled on fares, hall rentals, printer ink, snacks for volunteers, and repairs for my chair. I sold my old camera. I turned down paid work because the advocacy swallowed up my time. One relationship ended because I was always exhausted and somewhere else in my head.

Still, the need kept widening. Every yes from one family seemed to create two more calls I couldn't ignore.

In Embu, I met grandparents raising a boy who crawled from room to room because they could not afford a wheelchair. In Limuru, I met a young woman studying from her cousin's notes because her classrooms were upstairs. In Murang'a, I met older people who hadn't visited a clinic in years because transport was hard. I could not unsee any of it.

That was when the regional non-profit approached me. The non-profit invited me to Upper Hill, praised the trust I had built, and offered training, transport support, small staff stipends, and wider reach. For one evening, I believed help had finally arrived.

Then the real terms surfaced.

Their vans had makeshift lifts with no clear safety record. Their portable ramps felt flimsy before anyone even used them. Their rollout depended on public demonstrations before proper testing occurred.

Worst of all, they wanted me to become the public face of the programme in communities that trusted my judgement.

When I objected, a coordinator named Kamau smiled and said, "Usiwaze sana kuhusu hilo. Unajua mradi wako unaweza kusambaratika haraka bila msaada wetu." Do not overthink it. You know your project could collapse easily without our backing.

I laughed weakly, hoping I had misheard him.

I had not.

For several days, I tried to persuade myself that imperfect access might still be better than none.

That was the trap.

Kamau's team kept pressing on every fear I had. They named the towns I could no longer afford to revisit. They reminded me how many families were waiting. They pointed to children I had introduced to them, as if those children were arguments rather than human beings. One staff member told me, almost kindly, "People need results, not purity."

Purity. As if safety were an indulgence. As if bodies like ours were acceptable testing grounds for somebody else's ambition.

I took those words with me to the outreach event in Nyeri because I wanted evidence, not instinct. I wanted one fair reason to trust my unease. Instead, everything confirmed it. The ramp flexed before use.

A support plate sat unevenly on the ground. The modified van door jammed halfway during a demonstration. A volunteer whispered that someone had changed the fittings just the night before. When a father asked who had inspected the equipment, no one answered clearly.

Then Baraka rolled forward, his chair tilted, and his mother nearly watched him fall.

That moment exposed more than faulty equipment. It exposed the true purpose of the partnership. Kamau did not rush to the child first. He rushed to ask whether anyone had filmed the incident. Another staff member cleared people away from the backdrop with the programme logo.

They had built speed, visibility, and donor appeal into the plan from the beginning, while disregarding safety.

My role became painfully clear.

They did not need my ideas. They needed my credibility. They wanted a disabled advocate with a real community behind him so families would lower their guard. If someone were badly hurt later, they would still have statements and distance. Families remembered me because I asked them to trust me.

By the time I returned to Thika, the contract in my bag no longer felt like an opportunity. It felt like a trap waiting for my signature.

I refused to sign two mornings later in a café on Ngong Road.

My hands were shaking, but my voice stayed steady. I slid the contract back and told Kamau I would not attach my name to equipment that put disabled people at risk. He called me emotional, unrealistic, and unfair to communities needing quick access.

I told him danger is not the same as access. I told him disabled people are not props for donor pitches.

He looked at me for a long second and said, "Then do it alone."

For a while, that was exactly how it felt.

The offer vanished. So did promised introductions. Rumours spread that I was difficult, ungrateful, and impossible to work with. One volunteer drifted away after hearing I had sabotaged a major opportunity. For weeks, I woke in dread, wondering if I had protected people or destroyed what we built.

Then the calls started.

Not from funders. From parents, wheelchair users, and volunteers who had seen enough at Nyeri to understand the choice I had made. Baraka's mother sent word that she was grateful I had not stayed silent.

A teacher in Nairobi offered us a classroom for workshops. Brian spent a weekend helping me draft registration papers. Wanjiru took over our bookkeeping before I could argue.

Two physical therapists agreed to review our safety guides without charging us.

A fabricator in Kariobangi offered to redesign a ramp with us instead of selling the first version. A lawyer connected to a parent helped us read the registration papers line by line.

That was when we changed course.

Instead of chasing scale, we built standards. We formalised the initiative as Daraja la Magurudumu, a small organisation supporting people with mobility challenges and their families through peer mentoring, practical workshops, safer transport solutions, and simple educational resources. We tested the equipment before letting the public use it.

We worked only with fabricators who changed designs based on user feedback. We grew through trusted local partners in Thika, Nairobi, and the surrounding rural communities.

It was slower than the glossy plan they had offered us.

It was also honest.

My relationships improved because the people closest to me could finally see that I was no longer trying to save everyone at once.

I was building something careful enough to last. Over time, that quiet work reached more families than I expected. Not because we promised miracles, but because we stopped pretending dignity could be built on risk.

The crash that paralysed me changed my body. The dangerous deal that followed changed my judgment.

Before all this, I thought danger was always obvious. I thought it looked like a speeding vehicle, a missing handrail, or a staircase blocking a doorway. I did not understand that danger can also arrive polished, smiling, and full of funding language.

When people wait too long for help, immediacy begins to feel important. It can make shortcuts seem compassionate. It can even make you ashamed for asking whether the shortcut is safe.

I understand that shame because I felt it. That fear showed me how easily people twist good intentions using polished urgency.

There were nights in Thika when I stared at the ceiling and imagined what that money could have done.

More outreach. More wheelchairs. More families had reached before another school term passed. I also imagined my own life becoming easier. Refusing the deal did not make me fearless. It made me afraid that I had chosen principle over people.

But Nyeri settled that argument inside me.

Access that puts disabled people in danger is not access; it is neglect dressed in better language. Any project that asks vulnerable people to accept harm for the sake of appearances has already forgotten who it exists to serve.

So now, when families and young advocates ask what matters most, I answer as plainly as I can. Dignity is not charity. Safety is not optional. Growth means nothing if its foundation is silence, pressure, and false hope.

I lost the use of my legs on a road between Nakuru and Nairobi, but I refused to lose my name as well.

If a cause can survive only by risking the very people it claims to protect, what exactly is it saving?

This story is inspired by the real experiences of our readers. We believe that every story carries a lesson that can bring light to others. To protect everyone's privacy, our editors may change names, locations, and certain details while keeping the heart of the story true. Images are for illustration only. If you'd like to share your own experience, please contact us via email.

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