'It's hard to be disabled'
2006-08-17 15:20
Kumasi - Patrick Yaw Obeng hawks shoes from his wheelchair on the side of a road in central Ghana.
Few of his customers knew that Obeng, who lost a leg in a car accident 20 years ago, had competed internationally for his country.
He said: "Some of the people have seen me on television, they know I am a sportsman. If you don't ask me, I will never tell you."
Obeng said he brought home silver and bronze medals from the All Africa Games in Nigeria in 2003. He hoped to compete in the Beijing 2008 paralympics in the long-distance wheelchair race.
He said: "That is my vision, I have a medal from Nigeria, my ambition is to have one from Beijing."
But, a return ticket to China costs about $1 200, a huge sum in this poor West African country, and Obeng doubted Ghana's sporting establishment would sponsor him.
Obeng 'dedicated wheelchair athlete'
He said: "They don't seem to appreciate what I have achieved already."
Obeng was among a small group of dedicated wheelchair athletes who trained on the congested streets of Kumasi, which were difficult even for the able-bodied to navigate.
Some of the athletes had won international medals, others trained to give structure to their days and meaning to their lives.
On her daily training circuits through the clogged streets, wheelchair user Hajara Mohammed heard shouts of encouragement, and sometimes cried of concern, from passers-by.
A woman, who lost the use of her legs to polio after she was just four, said: "Before I got into sport, I was always depressed and had no hope ... (now) there is meaning in life."
A winner of two bronze medals in Nigeria in 2003, Hajara, 32, couldn't afford to finish school and was now unemployed, living with her parents.
Fellow athlete Aziz Abdul Mohammed, his legs withered from polio, crawled on his hands and knees for the first eight years of his life.
WHO launches a global campaign
He said: "We always tried to play football, we were crawling and using our hands to play", displaying the calluses on his knuckles.
Africa had been hard hit by polio, which could paralyse a child for life within hours. The World Health Organisation launched a global campaign in 1988 to wipe out the disease, but failed to reach its target by the end of 2005.
The disease was still found in a handful of countries, including Nigeria on the African continent.
Mohammed was now chairperson of the 70-strong Oseikrom Disabled Sports Club, one of a handful of regional clubs ran by Ghana's Society for the Physically Disabled.
He also coached the basketball team, shouting encouragement and instruction to the players, including Hajara, as they practised on a battered concrete court with just one hoop in the rising heat of a Saturday morning.
Some of the athletes have their own wheelchairs but the lightweight sports ones are expensive. Sometimes people turn up
on crutches, hoping to borrow one of the club's six wheelchairs
only to find there aren't enough to go around.
Ghana's National Sports Council said it valued the country's disabled athletes, but with resources so scarce, it was hard to see how a trip to Beijing could be funded.
The Council's Chief Executive Prince Oduro-Mensah said: "We will do what we can to support them, but in 2008 we will be hosting the (soccer) African Cup of Nations.
"The attempt now is to make sure they have infrastructure to be able to do sports ... They have fantastic talent and we can nurture it."
Battle to win financial backing
The Cup of Nations was the continent's most prestigious football event and the fact that it coincided with the paralympics was hugely frustrating for the Kumasi athletes.
The battle to win financial backing reflected the wider struggle for acceptance in Ghana, where some believed that illnesses were caused by spirits and that people with disabilities had been cursed.
A new law should, at least on paper, go some way to improving the status of disabled people, by enshrining rights like access to public places and equal employment opportunities. The law had yet to come into effect.
Sport could boost a disabled person's status within their families and communities, but attitudes were slow to change.
In Aziz Abdul Mohammed's poor family, many thought his disability was God's wish, necessary to prevent him from committing crimes as an able-bodied person. He said: "Growing up as a disabled person in Africa is hard."
For those who are crippled, getting a wheelchair could transform lives shot through with the stigma of being called "crawlers".
Maxwell Boachie, a pioneer of disabled sport in Ghana, said: "The disabled ... no matter what your educational status, people will look down on you. You are not respected.
"But, if you have a wheelchair and you are dressed properly, even if you have only one shirt and it is always neat, wherever you go, they will accept you."