PHOTO: Physically Disabled mother with her children and their mud hut
Report compiled by Garmah Never Lomo, garmahlomo@gmail.com
Life continues to be extremely difficult for a disabled couple in the cotton tree community in Liberia’s central city of Gbarnga, Bong County, which is over 197 kilometers from Monrovia.
Mr. John Mulbah, who is visually impaired, tells this writer about his harsh living condition in which he and his family can hardly get a full meal a day.
He and his physically disabled fiancée, Patience Kollie who describes the condition they are living under as “hell” and says it has become unbearable.
John Mulbah trying to enter their mud hut
The couple say they and their children go to bed everyday with hunger and if nothing is done about their condition urgently, and fear that they might all one day starve to death.
Surviving on mining sand from the river, Mr. Mulbah to feed his family, he says if he doesn’t get customer to buy the wheelbarrow loads of sand, they sometimes have to sleep on empty stomach.
“Imagine a man who doesn’t see but goes about digging sand in the river and sometimes he won’t know whether the river is full or not, this is dangerous to my life but what to do?” he said.
The visually impaired man explained that the more he and his family try to make better a life, the more life shows its ugly head to them, especially when there is no customer to buy his sand on a giving day.
John pondering over their plight with fiancee Patience (sitting left),
kids and a visiting family member
Explaining his ordeal tears, Mr. Mulbah added that he usually uses his imagination when digging the sand from the river.
A pile of sand is sold for seven hundred Liberian dollars and the proceed realized is used to upkeep himself, his wife and three children.
Mr. Mulbah disclosed that he was not born blind but got blind July 28, 2005, when they went to swim in a nearby , where everyone usually used to go swim in Bong County.
As regards shelter, the Mulbah family cannot even boast of having a proper house to live in. They are currently sleeping in a leaking old mud hut and when it rains, they can hardly sleep with the rain pouring on them all night.
His fiancée, Patience Kollie also says that it almost looks like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, because their family’s plight is made worse, because, she is unable to move around easily because of her physical disability.
Ms. Kollie two legs are paralyzed and smaller with all her toe sticking together tightly.
“See all these marks on my feet, they are hot water burn mark used by her mother and other neighbors who used to warm my legs,” she explains.
She became paralyzed she went through a C-section/ Cesarean delivery for her second child ten years ago in 2010.
After going through the C-section she began feeling pains in her abdomen after which she and her mother went back at the health facility, where she underwent the C-section (operation) and explained to the doctor about what was happening to her. But unfortunately, lack of money could not enable her to solve her health problem.
Ms. Kollie explains that she was charged US$400 for her treatment, but she and her went ahead and opted for home care out of frustration, as no family member could help because of their abject poverty state.
The condition of this couple with disabilities together with their three children is desperate, to say the least.
SOS appeal to Pres. Weah and VP Taylor
John and Patience are urgently seeking help from the Liberian leader President George Weah, Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor and other charity/organizations and individual humanitarians to improve their miserable conditions.