Have you ever imagined what it would be like to text, cook, and do laundry with your feet because it is the only option you have?
That is the life of 34-year-old Miriam Wawira since being born without both arms.
“It was no accident. Just like you are born with hands and legs is the same way I was born with legs only. I was so tiny growing up that my friends nicknamed me Mims, a name I still respond to even now,” she this reporter.
She reveals that the first thing she did early in life was accepting she was abled differently and learning to live with it like any normal being with all limbs would.
While she learned how to do everything else using her feet since childhood, things changed seven years ago when she became a mother.
That meant babysitting, changing diapers, and putting her son to breastfeed all with the help of her legs.
Miriam embodies the strength of a woman from the manner in which she still manages to balance work and being a doting mother to her seven-year-old son.
“My feet are very flexible, and for some reason, some of the new moves come naturally,” she said. When her son was two years, the man she had been in a relationship with for five years walked out of the relationship.
“We weren’t married yet, just in a relationship, and although single motherhood has not been easy given he doesn’t support us, I am okay as long as my son never lacks,” she explained.
“At times I need to do a task that needs arms like getting something for him from a high level but I can’t. I also miss the fact that I can never hold my son’s hand or carry him with my arms as other mothers do,” she continued.
Her son added that he sometimes wishes she could hug him, but then he understands it is not her wish that she is abled differently.
The young man has also mastered the art of coming through for her whenever he is in the house seeing that some tasks come out as challenging given her condition.
A fellow colleague at her work place in one of the Telco revealed that watching Miriam go about her business while at work is amazing.
“She puts the headset on her head and types on the computer keyboard with her feet. She is so fast man it is a sight to behold,” said Gideon Ingasia.
One thing that stands out for Miriam is that she has remained with a bubbly personality despite the physical challenge she was born with. “I am always full of life because my condition does not limit my happiness,” she concluded.