MY DISABILITY, MY REBIRTH

I didn't get out of my comfort zone until l started playing the game of challenges with my life. I am a girl from the south south of Cameroon  who was brought into this world by a man who was a soldier and a woman whose job is to take care of the home and the family. This union brought forth 5 children  (3 boys and 2 girls) and I was 2 child of this union. My father loved me so much that he always called me his favourite daughter.

I lost my father to the promiscuous hands of death when I was 8 years old. Nevertheless, living was worth everything that love could offer when I had my father around. I could go to the best schools if I wished to, and I was the only child who had the opportunity to choose between the English or French systems of education. And I chose to study in Macron’s language (French). I made that choice because I wanted to be unique in everything I  did, as I was from an Anglophone background. And all my siblings did the English system of education.

When my father died, I silently said to myself that my foundation has collapsed. My shield has been snatched away from me leaving me at forefront of wars without any substitute. So I was wondering how I would woke up from this nightmare.  Now that my provider was gone when I was 8 years old, as a child, I knew that my future didn’t exist, talk less of my life.

Life became more and more difficult. My mum wasn’t working, my dad relegated her to his kitchen and bearing his children. My father was a patriarchal husband who thought life started and ended with him as the head of the family.  We all depended on him for everything and he didn’t ever complain. But he is gone, on who would we rely? My mum was crying everyday and night. And when I asked her why was she crying with her children here to comfort her. She replied: “ your father did a huge mistake when he was alive”. I was wondering what could be the huge mistake  that my father did. Then she added: “ he helped some people obtain jobs, but he didn’t ever offer one to me and now he is gone. He has left me with 5 mouths to feed and myself”. I felt my mum’s pain when she spoke those words, but I couldn’t do much neither could my siblings because we were children. My mum’s worst fears turned into reality. There  were days where we would stay hungry, not even a soul would come and pay us a visit. At time we would drink “garri” the whole day and it would seems like Christmas. And the day my mum said she would cook something delicious,  we were expecting to have our favourite  banana and red oil. When the rain started falling everyone looked for a corner to hide his/her head.  

 I had challenges that wanted to overthrown me but luckily there was a force who stood the gap for me. I  got up one morning when I was 11 years old with a stranger illness. There was no money to take me to the hospital. So my mum thought it was wise to go and borrow drugs from a chemist. She thought I had yellow fever from the symptoms that I was having. But the illness persisted, she had no choice then to go and borrow money in order to take me to the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital, the doctor told her if she had not brought me there I would have died because I had a deadly disease. He said I had hepatitis B. He told my mum and I that the hospital had no treatment for that because that was not a common disease then. My mum fought very hard to see that I recovered from that strange disease. It was later I found out that the disease is been transmitted through sexual contact and body fluids.  Thanks to the forces who watched over me, I came out of that challenge victorious. The following year, I had another attack but I called its another challenge with which I had a real battle.

Life doesn’t dish you the food you are wishing for until it feels you are prepared. I had so many wishes and dreams, but I didn’t know that life is reserving a shocking surprise for me again. I was strong and healthy, so I thought. Until the cards that life had for me started displaying. When I was in form two in Lycée Bilingue Molyko Buea, I  went to do sport when I had a terrible headache and couldn’t recognize where I was, and I lost my speech due to the headache. My teacher rushed me to the Regional Hospital in Buea. And I only regained consciousness in the night. When I got up in hospital everything was normal still when I was asked to get up and go home. That was went I realized that my right leg and hand were paralyzed. I screamed and called for help but not body could help even if they wished to. The partial stroke was mine to deal with. This came to test my faith and to render me useless. After some days, the situation aggravated. I became a child who couldn’t speak, eat, walk alone. I needed assistance for everything. It was very painful because I didn’t come into this world like that. I was devastated and worried about how my destiny would look like with me in this condition. I was slowly dying inside as I could not play with my siblings and friends, nor go to school because the stroke had retard mentally. I became like a 1 year old infant who was literally depend on her mum or siblings. Three years later with the help of my mum and siblings, I could construct some short sentences, walking with the help of a stick as there was no money to buy crushes and my right hand was still numb. Everyone would look down on me, they knew I didn’t have anything to offer.  Some called me “ogbanje” (cursed child) that wanted to take away the peace of her family. Yet in the mist of all that, I got to know a lady who had a safe space for adolescents in my community. She asked me a pertinent question that could I imagine myself writing with my left hand, do I wish to go back to school? She saw something in which even I wasn't seeing then. She said all these would be possible if I trained my left hand. I continually trained my left hand for over one year, and I went back to school the following academic year. Even though I was limping to school, I was excited and I discovered that I was not the same person. Everything about me had changed. My determination grew and I was unstoppable. Some classmates were making fun of me by saying that I don’t need to be in school because I write properly with my left hand, and I don't articulate words well. I didn’t have time to cry over that because I had cried for over three years nothing changed. But now that I have an opportunity to turn my life around no voice could stop me. I said to myself that “my disability is my rebirth” and I have to start doing extraordinary things because I’m an extraordinary girl. As I did the French education, I wrote my BEPC, PROBATOIRE, BACCALAUREATE with my left hand. And today my a holder of a bachelor degree in English and French from the University of Buea. Through my social work, I saw the need of sensitising parents, children, and youths about the challenges that they might face in life, they should always remember that if they fail to raise above a challenge, then they have failed someone who depended on them. Moreover I work with vulnerable girls and women in my community. I empower them with skills they need for their sustainability and development.