You have to be pretty determined to get to Mahadaga. The most direct way from neighbouring Benin involves crossing the Atacora hills, which at its worst is a barely discernible track on exposed rock. At its steepest part the way zigzags and the car lurches from boulder to boulder in first gear. Watching our painful progress are adult baboons who sit Buddha like in serene bewilderment or boredom. Local trade passes by bicycle along a more direct trail. We see a procession of cyclists pushing their wares upwards on foot. Then we descend through woods where exotic birds dart in and out of view. Rock gives way to powder sand that belches out behind us in a choking foam. Altogether a hairy experience. We cover seventy kilometres in a seemingly unending four hours. Another but longer route passes via Arli and crosses an extensive nature reserve and national park. Care must be taken not to lose ones way. Some time ago a family from one of the embassies in Ouagadougou, out to discover rural Burkina, missed the way, ran out of fuel and perished.
Mahadaga is one of a string of tiny villages dotted along the foot of the Falaise de Gobnangou. It would be unremarkable but for two things. In the mid 1950's evangelical missionaries established a medical clinic to bring a semblance of health care to this isolated spot. On several visits over the past ten years I have noticed that it is always buzzing with activity. Infants with malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria, adults with ulcers, TB or AIDS and a life saving maternity unit where pregnant women often without any prenatal check-ups arrive in labour. The nearest hospital in Diapaga is forty kilometres away along a hazardous rocky road. This is bicycle country. Motor vehicles are rare, so are motorbikes. The people are poor and bicycles are cheap to maintain. Not suitable though for transporting one's wife enduring a difficult labour at midnight in the rainy season. The other quite remarkable feature is the sudden appearance of many people in wheel chairs or hand pedalled iron tricycles. And most of the occupants are young adults or children. Others propel themselves on crutches swinging their limp legs under them.
Mahadaga is home to a centre for the rehabilitation of physical and mental handicap. The driving force behind this is Francoise Pedeau, a nurse-midwife from Paris who has worked at Mahadaga for the past fifteen years. A member of the same Christian mission that runs the health centre, she came to work in the clinic. She still does. She not only treats patients, she is the administrator, planner and paymaster and runs the maternity service. It is not unusual for her to spend half a night attending to a complicated obstetric case, even accompanying the patient to hospital for a blood transfusion or Caesarean. Only recently did she give up driving at night, as there is now an ambulance in the village. Next morning she is always back on duty.
No doubt this very full life would have continued had she not met Moussa. Moussa, now twenty-six, contracted polio at the age of three. It paralysed both his legs leaving them little more than floppy sticks. He went to live with his grandmother who having no training in looking after a handicapped child allowed the boy to sit on the ground with his useless legs under him. His hips and knees being constantly flexed stiffened so that when he was lifted up his legs no longer lengthened straight to the floor but remained concertinered to his buttocks.
Something about Moussa caught Francoise's attention. The outcome for Moussa was surgery to release his contractures, the provision of leg braces and crutches and enrolment at the local primary school. Being a bright lad he completed the six years' work in four and moved up to secondary school. However he had a fall breaking a hip and dropped out of "formal" education. For the past several years he has been assisting as a laboratory helper at Mahadaga's health centre. The day before my last visit he married an able-bodied local girl and now says his ambition is to take a laboratory training course in neighbouring Benin.
So Moussa became the first of today's over two hundred young handicapped persons to be enrolled into Francoise's on-going rehabilitation "adventure". Over forty of the children attend primary school in the village. Another thirty have been placed in a variety of apprenticeships (paid for out of project funds) which include carpentry, dressmaking, leather craft, gardening, gift making and even accountancy. Over the past couple of years several new buildings have been erected to house the activities of this project. Amongst them a new orthopaedic appliance making workshop, a room for physiotherapy and the making of plaster of Paris casts and a place for working with cerebral palsy toddlers. A new water tower that can be seen a long way off now marks this place of hope for so many disfigured children. Across the road is a fenced off nursery garden, irrigated by an intricate network of water distribution pipes fed by four wells. Here a group of young men, physically disabled, produce tomatoes, salads and peppers, mangoes and papayas as a means of earning a living.
Palamanga is an articulate 26-year-old who works as a physiotherapist at the handicap centre. He, like so many others, also contracted polio as a small boy, which left him with a contracted Achilles tendon and foot drop on one leg and with weakness in both shoulders. After surgery on his heel and by wearing an ankle support he is now fully mobile. Francoise's project sent him to Ouagadougou for training in physiotherapy and for the past two years he is one of the key members of staff. His speciality is using plaster of Paris casts to straighten out deformed contracted limbs. His gentle manner gains the confidence of frightened new patients, for having suffered himself he understands just how they feel.
Despite all the evident suffering in so many young lives there is an air of optimism everywhere. Faces break into easy smiles and eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. Life may have dealt these youngsters a poor hand of cards but thanks to Francoise Pedeau and her rehabilitation centre there is hope for their future.
Who would have thought that in an isolated hamlet like Mahadaga there could be a place for renewal and renaissance? One person's energy and faith has achieved such a lot. Francoise's love and determination have touched so many crippled lives.
Gifts to help this work continue can be sent to SIM International, Weatheringsett, Stowmarket, Suffolk. IP14 5QX, marked "for Mahadaga project for the handicapped". The gifts will be forwarded to Francoise Pedeau.
Mahadaga is one of a string of tiny villages dotted along the foot of the Falaise de Gobnangou. It would be unremarkable but for two things. In the mid 1950's evangelical missionaries established a medical clinic to bring a semblance of health care to this isolated spot. On several visits over the past ten years I have noticed that it is always buzzing with activity. Infants with malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria, adults with ulcers, TB or AIDS and a life saving maternity unit where pregnant women often without any prenatal check-ups arrive in labour. The nearest hospital in Diapaga is forty kilometres away along a hazardous rocky road. This is bicycle country. Motor vehicles are rare, so are motorbikes. The people are poor and bicycles are cheap to maintain. Not suitable though for transporting one's wife enduring a difficult labour at midnight in the rainy season. The other quite remarkable feature is the sudden appearance of many people in wheel chairs or hand pedalled iron tricycles. And most of the occupants are young adults or children. Others propel themselves on crutches swinging their limp legs under them.
Mahadaga is home to a centre for the rehabilitation of physical and mental handicap. The driving force behind this is Francoise Pedeau, a nurse-midwife from Paris who has worked at Mahadaga for the past fifteen years. A member of the same Christian mission that runs the health centre, she came to work in the clinic. She still does. She not only treats patients, she is the administrator, planner and paymaster and runs the maternity service. It is not unusual for her to spend half a night attending to a complicated obstetric case, even accompanying the patient to hospital for a blood transfusion or Caesarean. Only recently did she give up driving at night, as there is now an ambulance in the village. Next morning she is always back on duty.
No doubt this very full life would have continued had she not met Moussa. Moussa, now twenty-six, contracted polio at the age of three. It paralysed both his legs leaving them little more than floppy sticks. He went to live with his grandmother who having no training in looking after a handicapped child allowed the boy to sit on the ground with his useless legs under him. His hips and knees being constantly flexed stiffened so that when he was lifted up his legs no longer lengthened straight to the floor but remained concertinered to his buttocks.
Something about Moussa caught Francoise's attention. The outcome for Moussa was surgery to release his contractures, the provision of leg braces and crutches and enrolment at the local primary school. Being a bright lad he completed the six years' work in four and moved up to secondary school. However he had a fall breaking a hip and dropped out of "formal" education. For the past several years he has been assisting as a laboratory helper at Mahadaga's health centre. The day before my last visit he married an able-bodied local girl and now says his ambition is to take a laboratory training course in neighbouring Benin.
So Moussa became the first of today's over two hundred young handicapped persons to be enrolled into Francoise's on-going rehabilitation "adventure". Over forty of the children attend primary school in the village. Another thirty have been placed in a variety of apprenticeships (paid for out of project funds) which include carpentry, dressmaking, leather craft, gardening, gift making and even accountancy. Over the past couple of years several new buildings have been erected to house the activities of this project. Amongst them a new orthopaedic appliance making workshop, a room for physiotherapy and the making of plaster of Paris casts and a place for working with cerebral palsy toddlers. A new water tower that can be seen a long way off now marks this place of hope for so many disfigured children. Across the road is a fenced off nursery garden, irrigated by an intricate network of water distribution pipes fed by four wells. Here a group of young men, physically disabled, produce tomatoes, salads and peppers, mangoes and papayas as a means of earning a living.
Palamanga is an articulate 26-year-old who works as a physiotherapist at the handicap centre. He, like so many others, also contracted polio as a small boy, which left him with a contracted Achilles tendon and foot drop on one leg and with weakness in both shoulders. After surgery on his heel and by wearing an ankle support he is now fully mobile. Francoise's project sent him to Ouagadougou for training in physiotherapy and for the past two years he is one of the key members of staff. His speciality is using plaster of Paris casts to straighten out deformed contracted limbs. His gentle manner gains the confidence of frightened new patients, for having suffered himself he understands just how they feel.
Despite all the evident suffering in so many young lives there is an air of optimism everywhere. Faces break into easy smiles and eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. Life may have dealt these youngsters a poor hand of cards but thanks to Francoise Pedeau and her rehabilitation centre there is hope for their future.
Who would have thought that in an isolated hamlet like Mahadaga there could be a place for renewal and renaissance? One person's energy and faith has achieved such a lot. Francoise's love and determination have touched so many crippled lives.
Gifts to help this work continue can be sent to SIM International, Weatheringsett, Stowmarket, Suffolk. IP14 5QX, marked "for Mahadaga project for the handicapped". The gifts will be forwarded to Francoise Pedeau.
