"I see Manuel as a father figure and I love him,” says Samuel, 12. He lives at Manuel’s centre and dreams of becoming a professional footballer in Portugal.
   Samuel was born into a poor family made up of his mother, father, and his older brother Solomon, whose sight was poor. When his father realised that Samuel was totally blind, he abandoned the family. Like many others, he believed that blind children were worthless because they couldn’t go to school or help in the fields. “My mother worked in the fields, and as soon as she was offered work she left my brother and I with neighbours in the village. Sometimes she was away for several weeks at a time,” says Samuel.
   The neighbours didn’t care for the brothers well. Samuel and Solomon were hungry, naked, dirty, and were often beaten. Samuel, who was only a baby, was left lying on the ground while Solomon stumbled around the village with no-one looking after him.
   “I don’t know why my mother didn’t carry me on her back while she was working. If a mother has a baby who can see, then she would always keep the baby with her and breastfeed. My mother didn’t do that for me, and being left alone was bad for me. I cried constantly.”

Manuel’s rescue mission
Manuel found out that there were two little boys who were blind and not being cared for in the village, and he went on a rescue mission in his jeep.
   “He came to get Solomon and me so that we could live with him at his centre. I was only a year old so I don’t remember anything about living in the village, but Manuel tells us about our background so that we understand why we live with him.”
   To begin with, Samuel cried a lot. But Manuel and his wife Domingues cared for him like their own son. They gave him food several times a day, and plenty of cuddles. One day, he stopped crying, and once he was old enough he started at Manuel’s school. Manuel arranged for Samuel to have a series of eye tests, just like all the other children at the centre. The doctors discovered that he had a cataract in one eye, and wanted to operate on him.
   “I was eight years old and had been blind my whole life, so I didn’t know what anything looked like. All of a sudden I could see with one eye, and the first thing I saw was the ceiling fan above my hospital bed. I was terrified! But Domingues was there, she comforted me.”