PHOTO: Lydia T. Dolly, disabled but not unable
By Jenneh Kemokai
GRAND CAPE MOUNT, Liberia- The maxim, “life is a riddle,” mainly plays for the physically challenged folks whose physical conditions give the puzzles of life’s harsh margins. But others have taken on life’s challenges to ensure their disabled conditions do not negatively impact their survival.
Madam Lydia T. Dolly, age 48, is one of such persons living with disabilities, who is doing everything to not just live at the mercy of charity. Categorically stating that begging for alms is not an ideal way to survive, she has advised PwDs to follow her example by engaging in income generating and entrepreneurial ventures to conquer their situations.
Lydia wasn’t born with disability. Her mother told her that she contracted a crippling illness when she was an infant.
Currently based in Tahn Town, Gola Konneh District, Madam Dolly is learning tailoring with sponsorship from the Bea Mountain Mining Company in Grand Cape Mount. She said she sees it an opportunity to advance her knowledge in tailoring than to sit and be begging for living.
She rather survives on small income generating activities. She advises people living with disabilities against depending on alms through street begging, cautioning that charities do not last but are just for a while.
According to her, charity is not guaranteed, only based on the likings of individuals, donors or the government at a given time.
Now a spinster, she has been blessed with two surviving children. The older child is a female, 16 years old in 6 grade, while the second child is a male and in the 4th grade. She suffers severe leg paralysis with inability to move about, except with the support of a wheelchair.
For some time, she resided in the Liberian capital, Monrovia but later returned to her native Grand Cape Mount County, where she and her children have been managing with life devoid of begging for alms.
Madam Dolly and her family have been living on proceeds she has generated from hair plaiting, gardening and baking. Money raised from these incoming generating activities helps her with the education and that of her two children.
“Someone was helping to send me to tailoring school, but unfortunately the tailoring school closed because of the Coronavirus pandemic,” Lydia Dolly explained.
This physically challenged woman continues to encourage her fellow persons living with disabilities, especially females, to do something positive with the knowledge God has given them to help themselves and their children, instead of depending on alms from NGOs, the government and others.
“Those people from whom our friends – the physically challenged – are begging for alms will not give them all their needs,” Lydia T. Dolly advised. Publication of this article was made possible with support from Internews Liberia Inclusive Media Project.