Mohammed's Story
Mohammed is 19 years old. He was born in the east of the Sierra Leone not long before civil war started. Due to the disruption in public health services, he was not immunized and contracted polio. After his mother was killed, the rest of his family managed to escape to Kabala to stay with his elder sister and her family, until they too decided to flee due to encroaching fighting. They left him behind fearing his restricted mobility would hold them back. He stayed on in Kabala, hiding in the bush whenever the rebel soldiers came through the area.
Eventually he moved into another house in the village with a group of friends. He has had no formal education, apart from a three month rapid learning programme with an international organisation in 2004, and has never had a job. When he met the Leonard Cheshire Disability representative, they discussed his options for skills training. Mohammed expressed a wish to learn the traditional skill of weaving, something that very few other people in Kabala could do at that time. He was sent to Freetown to undergo training, and was elected to be part of the village management committee for the Leonard Cheshire Disability project by the participants at the sensitisation workshop. He returned to Kabala after the three months training and set up his own small enterprise.
| Jenny Matthews/ Leonard Cheshire Disability |
