Eichbergs

I was scheduled to be born on January 6th, 1965 but an exciting sleigh-ride which my parents enjoyed during Christmas made me arrive earlier, on December 27th, 1964.

I have two brothers; one born in 1966 and the other in 1970, of whom the elder one has an intellectual impairment.

When I was 3 years old, our family moved from Andernach, a nice small town in the Rhine Valley, to Gelsenkirchen, a city right in the middle of the Ruhr, Germany's biggest industrial area and, at that time, still a centre for heavy industries. Although living in a big industrial city, the area where I was brought up provided us with a lot of open space and "industrial countryside", like shut down railway tracks and coal-tips, remains of the former coal-mining industry in this area. I enjoyed playing there with my friends, and we were always looking for one adventure or the other.

Besides playing football, I also joined the youth group of the Catholic Parish in our district of town and then became very much involved in the activities of the church as a leader of a youth group, a lector, as well as singing and playing keyboards in the music group.

As a teenager, I also developed a passion for bicycle tours, which first took me to our nearer surroundings in Germany and in time, to a lot of other countries in Europe. Besides the challenge of the physical exercise on these tours, I mostly enjoyed the outdoor life and the beautiful countryside and getting to know new countries and people. Of course, not everything went off smoothly on these tours and we also faced difficulties that naturally go along with such journeys (e.g. I remember in one situation finding myself with a broken handlebars on my bicycle on a track in the middle of Iceland's lonely desert highland). Even though I do realize very clearly that those troubles were self-imposed - nobody forced me to struggle through Iceland on a bicycle - I think it was also on these tours that I learned to persevere in difficult and strenuous situations and to reach my destination.

I made most of the journeys with one of my best friends at the time. The relationships and encounters with those friends also had an important impact on the development of my Christian faith. While one of them, now a Protestant pastor, helped me to find a personal relationship with God and to focus on the Bible, the other one, now a Catholic priest, helped me to appreciate more the rich spirituality of the Catholic church, that I was brought up with. After my school examination in 1984, I started my 16 month community service as a conscientious objector.

I worked in a community-based service, assisting older people in their homes. After that, I studied special education at the Evangelic College for Social Science in Bochum, where I finished with my Diploma in 1990.

During my studies I met Sabine, who was studying the same subject. However, at that time we were just colleagues and friends, and it was not until two years after our studies, when I had already gone to Bavaria in southern Germany, that we got closer and discovered the same perspectives in our lives. It then only needed a romantic sunset in Assisi, during a holiday we spent together in Italy, and a year later, in 1993, we got married.

In terms of my professional career, I first worked for two and a half years in a home for severely multiple disabled children, which was, physically as well as mentally, a very demanding job. After that, I worked for three years in an institute for teenagers with various psychological and social problems.

After visiting two CBM seminars and a four week practical in the CBR project in Garu, northern Ghana, Sabine and I applied for a job with CBM. Since 1996 we have been working in a CBR project in Abuja together with Paul Caswell. In spite of the limitations and difficulties we are facing in our daily work, we are very much convinced of the CBR approach in assisting people with disabilities, and we enjoy the encounters with the local people in the communities.

Alexander Eichberg