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Tears streamed down the face of 52-year-old Zumenyo Amegashie, a woman who lost her entire right arm in a harrowing circumstance 20 years ago. She had just been told by a limb technician, after an evaluation, that the nature of her amputation did not make prosthetic fitting feasible. She could not bring herself to accept the news, as, according to her, that was her last hope for a life of independence and dignity.
Ms. Amegashie, a resident of Hatorgodo in the Volta Region, was inconsolable, and every effort by some of her colleagues who were also amputees to calm her down proved futile. It took the timely intervention of the Vice President of the Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled (GSPD), Courage Wormenor, to bring the crying woman to wipe her tears. “My sister, there is still hope as long as there is life, and so do not despair. Your inability to get a prosthetic arm today is not the end of the world,” he told her while offering emotional support to her.
In an interview with this reporter on the sidelines of a programme organised by the Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled in collaboration with the Ishk Tolaram Foundation, aimed at giving free artificial limbs to amputees, Ms. Amegashie revealed that she had travelled over four hours by motorbike and vehicle to get to the Ashaiman Municipality at 8am for the programme scheduled to start at 9am. She said that when she saw the advertisement by the philanthropic organisation to supply persons who have had their limbs amputated with prosthetics, she was determined to make it to the venue to benefit from their kind gesture, which she thought was rare.
She said she had seen the initiative as a second chance for people like her to return to the world of work. The 52-year-old mother of three said she was desperate to work to earn a living to support herself and her children and contribute meaningfully to society, but that dream had just been crushed.
She recalled various heartbreaks she had experienced in life, including her inability to get her arm literally replaced as an addition. Narrating how she lost her limb, the resident of Hatorgodo said disaster struck twenty years ago when a sugarcane grinding machine severed one of her arms. She said used the extracted juice from the sugarcane to make local alcoholic drinks for sale.
Ms. Amegashie said that for reasons still inexplicable to her, on that fateful day, her blouse got entangled in the roller of the machine, and as she struggled to free herself, the machine pulled her arm and threw her about so many times until her hand came off, changing her life for the worse.
According to her, as she struggled to come to terms with losing a limb, she was subsequently divorced by her husband, causing her to struggle to take care of herself and her three children. The former local drinks seller revealed that years later, she got married again to a good man and had another child, but her husband passed away nine years ago, creating another vacuum in her heart. She lamented how life had taken so much from her, including one of her children.
The 52-year-old widow said that, just when she had thought of getting a prosthetic to start a new life to support herself and her children, she had been turned away, describing that as too much to take. She, however, said that despite her inability to get a prosthetic, she was still hopeful for a miracle because she was not ready to give up. She therefore called on well-meaning people to help her get it. She also appealed to public-spirited persons to assist her in setting up a convenience store so she could earn a decent living.
The initiative by GSPD and the Ishk Tolaram Foundation, a philanthropic organisation, in collaboration with the Ghana Federation of Disability Organisations, brought amputees from all 16 regions of the country from May 6 to 13, aimed at giving them another opportunity to use the limbs they had lost for various reasons. All the beneficiaries, numbering over 500, had their measurements taken for the artificial limbs to be constructed and brought back in August to be distributed to them.
