This week’s Mwaya Mondays blog is written by RIPPLE Africa’s Charlie Knight

So I finally went round with Collins last week to visit some of his clients and see the amazing work he does! It’s only taken me about two years, but it was well worth it. Here are the children I saw.

This is Moffat, and family, who is one year old and was born with club feet. He had a corrective operation to cut the Achilles’ tendons, which was successful so that he now has straight feet. But further therapy by means of manipulation and corrective casts are needed to remedy the problem.

Tandiwe is one year old and has arthrogryposis, or, in layman’s terms that I can understand, she has severe joint problems. So Collins is correcting this by using full range of motion therapy, which he’s also trained Tandiwe’s mother to do, as well as making plaster casts for the baby to further help correct the problem.

The last chap we saw was Soljana, who is 10 years old and was born with severe knock knees (postural genuvarus). He now has some new above knee braces to help correct this following an operation on his knees last year. Having never been able to attend school until now because of this problem Collins said he was planning to start school this year. Good luck to the little chap!

It was fascinating and very exciting to see first-hand the work Collins does. He’s obviously very knowledgeable, but probably more important than that is his approach and how he talks to people. You can see how welcome he is by all his clients and their families who obviously greatly appreciate the work he does and the manner in which he carries it out.