What we owe to our blind daughter.

Our second child was born on 1 July 1974 in Kampala. She was blind and deaf, and is now totally without speech, but each day we are discovering what an extraordinary privilege it is to have this child in our family.

I admit that this miracle only happened because we are from a country that lacks the facilities to detect genetic defects and easily eliminate a pregnancy. Most sophisticated people act rapidly to prevent the arrival of such a `social inconvenience'; they might even see it as an embarrassment.

Following our traditions, when our daughter was born my mother chose a name for her, Amoding. In our Ateso language Amoding means a very rare but dear thing. At her christening we called her Stella, which we later discovered means star. What is intriguing is that my mother had no idea that our child was deaf and blind.

God must have placed this special child with us as a living message to make us understand that with him nothing is impossible. So many in our country died under Idi Amin and in later wars. Stella has no education yet her parents are safe and well even though they have never bribed a single person. Nor has she ever missed a meal in her 26 years.

Even if I died now, Stella has a mother, a big brother and four younger brothers and sisters. Although blind, without me she could still count on 12 eyes.

We cannot claim any merit as parents for all this. It is simply that we have learned to stop insulting God by worrying, as if we knew better than him what is best. His intelligence is perfect. That is why he did not make tusks a load to be carried by a mouse but entrusted them to an elephant.

I wish Stella knew how much she means to us.