The prognosis was bleak for engineer David Barrett when he broke his neck in a horse-riding accident. Now he can share his experience with patients in Uganda, he tells Rosita Boland.

It's rare that an interviewee has to compete with a pair of parrots to be heard, but that's what happens in David Barrett's Co Dublin home. Between them, Barrett's two African Grey parrots, Sucu and Oudouga, have more than 100 words. As we talk in his den at the back of the house, which overlooks Killiney Bay, the parrots keep an eye on us, flapping their feathers and muttering "tea . . . coffee . . . hello . . . goodnight".

"They're great company," Barrett says affectionately. In the evenings, the parrots like to sit on the back of his armchair and watch television with him. Sucu and Oudouga have to make the most of him when he's at home, because Barrett is more frequently out of the country than in it these days: most of his time is spent in Africa, in Uganda, working as a volunteer civil engineer.

There was a time in his life when Dublin-born Barrett thought he would never walk again, let alone be able to work and live independently in a foreign country. That he has managed to do so is a remarkable testament to both his own courage and to the staff of the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire. Between the offers of tea and coffee from his parrots, Barrett tells his story.

Barrett trained as a civil engineer at Trinity College Dublin. In 1963, he went to South Africa, where he worked for seven years, mostly on water treatment works. "South Africa was a very go-ahead society in those days, although for them, the rest of the world didn't exist apart from Israel - they were both pariahs together. They shared things like nuclear technology, and were pushed together in resisting the rest of the world," he observes dryly. There followed a couple of years in Zambia and five years in Nigeria.

"It was a fantastic life. I was very, very keen on sport. I played a lot of polo in Nigeria and rugby in every African country I lived in."

At home on leave, Barrett met his future wife at a blind date ball at Dublin Zoo. They married in 1978, and came back to Ireland to settle two years later, when their son Ross was born. However, the marriage was not a happy one. By September 1983, the couple had split up and had a date in court to discuss custody of Ross. The court date was set for a Monday. The previous Saturday, Barrett's life changed forever.

"I had a horse that I shared with a friend, that we kept in a field at the back of Leopardstown Racecourse. My plan was to hunt him. That afternoon, I was practising taking him over some jumps. I had gone over two jumps and was lining up for the third, when the horse's stride went wrong. He did a right-angle turn at the third jump, so suddenly that I flew out of the saddle and over the jump and landed on the ground. And . . . sort of nothing moved."

Unknown to Barrett, in those moments, he had broken his neck and become a quadriplegic. "I was conscious all the time I was lying there. I could talk, but I felt numb. I wasn't concerned, though. I was used to having accidents playing polo or rugby: I just thought this was a bigger accident."

Barrett was taken first to Loughlinstown and then to the National Rehabilitation Hospital. He had to be kept in a special bed, which protected his paralysed limbs, but which made him feel constantly claustrophobic. "Being strapped into this thing was like being in a coffin. I don't remember much about the following few weeks. The one thing from that time that is very, very vivid in my mind is when the lights went down at night, I panicked for some reason. I cried quite often, and asked the nurses to hold my hand."

His mother came to visit daily. His estranged wife, by his own request, did not. He was in intensive care for two months, during which time he did not see his toddler son. "Nobody ever sat down beside me and told me I was a quadriplegic. It didn't even dawn on me that I was. I had an extraordinary confidence that I would get better."

As the weeks passed with no change, "it came into my mind that I would start retracing my whole life. I went back as far as I could remember, to about four-and-a-half, and then went right through my whole life. I analysed why I had been a success in some jobs and a failure in others. I tried to remember everything. At night, I'd stop, and next morning, I'd pick up remembering my life where I had stopped the previous night." Keeping his mind active kept him sane, he thinks.

Barrett did not know this until later, but the general medical consensus for paralysis patients, as told to him later, is that if they do not resume even slight movement within six weeks, they probably never will. Eight weeks after his accident, Barrett found himself able to move the big toe on his left foot. Over the next few weeks, his entire body began to recover. "It was like thawing out," he explains. The last part of his body to recover were his hands: they remain contorted to this day.

In all, he spent seven months in Dún Laoghaire, and was an outpatient for a further three months. There followed a very low period for a long time, when there was a custody battle over his son, and when he was not well enough to work. Then in 1991, his son arrived at the door one day, aged 11, and announced that he wanted to live with his father. Apart from one brief and temporary return to his mother, Ross stayed. He still shares the Killiney house with his father. From the point that his son came to live with him, Barrett's appetite for life returned.

As his son grew up, Barrett began to work abroad again for periods, including a stint in Cambodia. Since his accident and recovery, Barrett's Christian faith has been an enduring and integral part of his life. His local church in Dublin is St Paul's in Glenageary, where the former archdeacon, Gordon Linney, was rector until his retirement last year.

Since the 1970s, St Paul's has sent a percentage of its church collection abroad to other mission-linked projects. One of them is a hospital in Kisiizi, Uganda. In 2000, Linney went there, to see how the parishioners' money was being spent. He was so impressed with what he found that he decided to make the hospital the church's special project.

"Money was raised for a paediatric unit. And I said to Gordon one day, 'You'll be needing an engineer to oversee the job'." As a result, Barrett now spends most of the year in Uganda, working on the hospital, which now has 200 beds.

As well as his formal work as an engineer, he directly oversees the spending of the St Paul's money. And, having once spent so many months in hospital himself, he now mentors a number of child patients through their illnesses and recovery; a task which he finds hugely rewarding.

"The wheel has come full circle on my life," Barrett adds. "I am back in Africa, I am useful, and I am blissfully happy."

Donations to the Kisiizi Hospital Mission Account can be sent to the AIB, Upper George's Street, Dún Laoghaire, to account number 77054148