The Power of Narrative
On a street in Ethiopia a woman pulls herself forward, one elbow grips the dust then the other. Cars careen by spitting black fumes and people hurry past. She could vanish from the street, and no one would notice. Her elbows are callused and fissures of sweat weave down her grime coated face. Her legs, thin and emaciated, drag behind her. Polio, age 8. Her parents thought she would succumb to the disease, but she kept breathing and it was only her legs that died.
75 million people worldwide need wheelchairs. My mind goes numb. I can imagine several hundred people. Beyond that the numbers are meaningless. Futility sets in. My own limitation is all I see.
I imagine it like this. That night the wind blows in from the desert and her aged mother cooks lentils over a wood stove. As the candlelight flickers on the whitewashed walls she pulls herself onto a sleeping mat and wonders why the sickness didn’t just take her.
But what if, that next day, a pickup truck, laden with wheelchairs, pulled into the village? What if there was a wheelchair for her? With a blue metal frame, plastic seat, rugged mountain bike wheels bolted to the sides, a waist strap, and footrests. Someone would lift her off the ground, and set her in the chair, away from dog feces and scorpions and scorched earth. Mobility. She could work. She could go to the market. And with everything changed, she could marry.
Think of 75 million people and the mind fogs. Think of one person, and anything is possible. One wheelchair for the price of a meal at a restaurant or a couple of tanks of gas. One wheelchair to change a person’s life forever.
My girls sit on the floor stringing beads into bracelets. Later we will set up a table at the bottom of the driveway and they will sell them to generous neighbors. By the end of the day they have enough money for one and a half wheelchairs. After matching donations from both sets of grandparents and a Free Wheelchair Mission matching campaign, their one and a half wheelchairs multiply to nine.
There are times when writing feels selfish and indulgent—a waste of time. Hours in front of a blinking cursor that could be spent doing other things. But then I think of the stories I read from Free Wheelchair Mission’s newsletter, the way narrative distills the needs of the 75 million into people we can meet and relate to. I see the power of narrative play out in almost every story I read. In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson brings racial inequity and the need for prison reform into our awareness by focusing on individual people. In the Overstory, Richard Powers chronicles the plight of millions of trees through the lives of nine human characters. And in my own way, I try to bring the power of narrative into my stories about sick babies—to capture the unique details in a way that fosters empathy and humanism. The next time I question the utility of struggling to lay down sentences, I will remember that with the right stories we can mold our collective consciousness, shed apathy, and forge connection. We can change the world through our stories.