The Edward Ndopu Story. My Story.

My mother often recites this story. One day, straight from work, she found me sitting in front of the television. It was turned off. I stared at the blank screen like a zombie. She patted me on the shoulder, but I paid no attention to her. Desperate for a response, my mother decided to position herself in front of me. She looked into my eyes and asked what was wrong. I looked up at her with glassy eyes and told her I want to go to school. I want to be like my younger brother, Wonga. She looked at me, speechless. I was only seven years old at the time and had never been to kindergarten. School was never an option for me because of my physical disability. I was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of two and was given until the age of five to survive.

Society told me and my family that able-bodiedness was a precondition for access to education, so up until that point my family had resigned ourselves to the reality that I might never be accorded with the right to an education.

But things changed on that day. A fire started burning in my mother’s belly. Enough was enough. She took to the streets and knocked on the door of every school in Windhoek, our home away from home at the time. Eventually, I was admitted into a primary school on the outskirts of town. It was a relatively under-resourced school, with very little to offer in terms of opportunity. But it was a school nonetheless.

That was almost 18 years ago. Today, I’m officially enrolled at the University of Oxford and will commence my Master of Public Policy degree in September. I am the first African with a disability to be admitted to the prestigious Blavatnik School of Government. My life is nothing short of miraculous. Not only have I defied life itself, I have also outstripped policy and its vision for someone like me.

Policy-making in the context of disability tends to focus almost exclusively on compliance and basic access to life. Through a combination of serendipity and struggle, I have surpassed basic access. I work for an international organisation, I have an undergraduate degree from Canada and I am visible in spaces from boardrooms to nightclubs.

I am not locked up in the medical industrial complex and for all intents and purposes I am free to be who I am. I am therefore uniquely positioned to advocate for the rights of people with disabilities beyond compliance, with the understanding that people with disabilities are full human beings who need access to joy, intimacy and self-determination as much as they need access to lifts, bathrooms and social services.

While at the University of Oxford, I will be setting up my own not-for-profit organisation called the Evolve Initiative, which seeks to close the access gap for people with disabilities. I want to advise governments around the world on ways to bridge the gap between the world that we have and the world that we ought to have.

I want to do this by ensuring that somewhere in the world a double amputee in a wheelchair is able to not only access the bank because there are ramps inside but she is also able to withdraw her own money through biometric technology, as opposed to signature authorisation as the universal standard. Because able-bodiedness is not a prerequisite for living life fully. Through the Evolve Initiative, I also hope to be the first African with a disability in space. I am on a mission to creating a world, and dare I say a universe, open to all.

But to get there, I need all the help I can get. Between now and September, I need $150,000 to cover the outstanding costs associated with my admission to Oxford as well as to get the Evolve Initiative off the ground.

Between now and mid-June, I need $30,000 to get an automated wheelchair that would enable me to grab life with both hands and squeeze the juice from it. From staring at a blank television screen because school is out of the picture for kids with disabilities, to being accepted as the first African with a disability at the University of Oxford – indeed, dreams do come true. DM

Edward (Eddie) Ndopu is the Founder and CEO of Evolve Initiative.

Photo: Edward Ndopu.