Crippled Ethiopian rights his life by walking upside down

His legs are spindly but his arms and shoulders strong. Tameru Zegeye swayed elegantly back and forth like a dancer a few times, then vaulted into a handstand on his high-tech crutches.

 “Tameru” means “miracle” in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. It fits the 31-year-old Ethiopian, who has turned a crippling congenital disability into an extraordinary ability to walk on his hands.

His eyes sparkle with pride when he demonstrates his hard-won physical skills — for the first 16 years of his life, he could only crawl on the ground. “I got from one place to another like a snake,” Zegeye recalled.

Friends, acquaintances and a number of observers recently gathered in Addis Ababa Stadium to cheer him on as he sought entry into Guinness World Records by covering 76m in a minute while doing a handstand on crutches. The application process is under way.  “Everything will be checked out in two months, I think, and then I can get the entry I long for,” Zegeye beamed.

He was born disabled near Lalibela, in Ethiopia’s northern highlands, at a time of famine. The bones in his legs were deformed, and his feet faced backwards. His mother was shocked.

“She abandoned me because she was always told I was the devil incarnate,” Zegeye said. “In Ethiopia they think that disabled people are possessed by demons.”

Zegeye’s grandfather — “a rich man thanks to all of his land” — took him in, believing that disabled children were God’s children, too. He was baptised “Fekadu,” or “God’s will.”

His grandfather sent him to an Ethiopian Orthodox school, where he was given his current name, “Tameru.”

Later, the old man gave the boy the greatest gift in his life to that point: a horse.

 “Although the other children made fun of me, it didn’t bother me as much since I could simply ride away,” Zegeye said. “I felt as though I suddenly had four legs.”

The animal was Zegeye’s best friend until his grandfather, at the urging of local villagers, gave it away after several years.

Zegeye’s travails continued. Since he got around by pulling himself forward with his hands while dragging his lower body through the dirt, his left leg became so badly infected that doctors wanted to amputate it.

 “I shouted at God and asked him why he was putting me through all this,” Zegeye said. But following an inspiration, he managed to heal himself by collecting various plants, grinding them up and applying the mixture to the festering sore.

Zegeye finally resolved to leave his grandfather, who had gone nearly blind and was no longer able to care for his grandson.

 “I crawled the 65km from my village to Lalibela. It took six days,” he said. There he lived for years on the street in miserable conditions, earning a bit of money shining shoes and walking a few metres on his hands as a tourist attraction. In the late 1990s he met someone who would change his life forever: an American surgeon visiting Lalibela to see its Unesco World Heritage site, a group of medieval, monolithic rock-hewn churches.

 “The doctor looked at me for a long time and then said I should go to a hospital in Addis Ababa, where he could help me,” Zegeye said. Villagers collected money and put him on the next airplane to the Ethiopian capital. His final destination: Black Lion Hospital.

Fourteen years and nine operations later, Zegeye’s feet are now pointed in the right direction. He can walk short distances unaided, has finished school and earned diplomas in tourism and information technology.

 “The moment I was able to stand upright for the first time was the best in my life so far,” he said smiling.

Zegeye is happiest doing a handstand on his ultralight, carbon-fibre crutches and performing tricks for the audience at the Circus Debre Berhan. He and the rest of the troupe were about to leave on a six-month tour of Sweden.

 “Discriminating against disabled people in Africa must stop,” he said. “I like being different — I’m the only one able to walk upside down on crutches!”