Routine plastic surgery is the
answer to a mother's prayer
ANY MOTHER worries about her children - their health and
happiness- is of paramount importance. But for Mama Sawaneh, her little daughter Aminata was a particular
worry.
Born without an earhole on the right side of her head, the six-year-old Gambian
girl faced a bleak future of isolation brought on by growing deafness.
In the society that Aminata lives in she would be denied good job and marriage
prospects just because of a congenital deformity - and
that was a big worry for 30-year-old Mama.
Tragically, lurking beneath the skin on the
right side of the little girl's head lay a perfectly-formed ear. Mama knew a
little bit of plastic surgery would right all of Aminata's problems and make the future rosy.
Such an operation is routine in the UK, but in rural Gambia, where families of 15
share a five-room concrete compound, and posters are stuck on school walls with plasters because there is no sticky
tape, the operation was only a dream. That was where the EADT readers stepped in, and made Mama's dream come
true.
The Gift of Sound appeal was launched in late August last year. Reporter Katharine
Mahoney and photographer Nick Strugnell went to The Gambia and
met Aminata and her family. They saw for themselves how her disability set her
aside from the rest of her classmates and siblings.
They saw a sweet six-year-old, who had just started school, but who was struggling
to survive in a loud community which relies on speech, who seemed to be withdrawing into herself as she heard less
and less.
Donations from mothers, grandmothers, policemen, families - ordinary EADT readers
flooded in. By Christmas the money was raised - £6,000 that will change a young girl's life. It will buy her
hearing. It will secure her a future.
And Mama can sleep easy once more.
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