Gamai

 

Confort never imagined that the morning she put on a pot of boiling water to make some rice for her hungry daughters would be the start of a mother’s nightmare.

One-year-old Gamai, who had only just begun to walk, toddled past the pot knocking it over as she fell. As the piping water spilled over onto her torso, her piercing screams transcended through the house to her mother’s ears. Before she knew the extent of the accident, tears began to stream down Confort’s face, her heart stopping. The world around her fell silent as she tried comfort her child: “My imagination took me to places a mother dares not go” recalls Confort, “I fell to the floor clutching my baby.”

Confort and her husband rushed Gamai to the local hospital where they could afford nothing but ointment for the pain. Not knowing what else to do, they reluctantly watched their little girl grow over the next few years with contracted hands and arms, severely limiting her ability.  Attempts to live their normal lives began taking its toll on the family as Gamai was not treated like the other children: “If we went out and she was mocked, she would become shy and cry. My husband would be cross that I would put her through that. I was stuck.”



The decision was made to keep Gamai from the outside world and for 3 years she was kept isolated in the courtyard of the family compound to avoid mockery: “I became very sad and angry that this was the way my daughter was going to grow up – hidden from the world”.



Then one day, in the midst of Confort’s anxiety, she learned of an opportunity for people to receive restored mobility in the form of an operation – a specialty of Mercy Ships. As the ship arrived in Guinea, Confort made the brave journey with Gamai – now 4 years old – out of the family compound to the patient selection site. There she was met by fellow mothers who had gone through similar accidents with their children and she began to feel at ease. That same ease developed to hope, which eventually grew to excitement as Gamai was selected for surgery onboard the Africa Mercy: “Now I am a different woman! I am filled with happiness that being hidden will not be her future.”

But even after surgery, the journey wasn’t complete. Weeks of painful rehabilitation began and Confort had to listen the same cries that she’d tried so hard to settle over the past three years: “It pains me to hear her hurting, but I know it needs to happen”.




When the day finally came for Gamai to leave the ship, you’d never have guessed she’d spent the majority of her life behind closed doors. Engaging and full of life, she leapt for joy as she played with her new found friends that neither mocked her nor stared at her for being different.



Unable to lift her hands above her head before surgery, Gamai can now reach higher in life than she ever could before.