Former leprosy patient Eduard O
in the cassava field.
Photo © DAHW/Jochen Hövekenmeier

DAHW is helping people in Nigeria through community-based rehabilitation projects.

 

The heavy pick that Eduard O. is using to loosen up the soil on the cassava mound so that it is easier for him to pull up the weeds, weighs almost five kilos. “If it has been dry for a long time, I cannot manage without the pick” he says quickly and swings the tool as though it were the easiest task in the world. It is a wonder that he can hold the pick at all: three fingers and a thumb on his left hand are all that leprosy has left him with.

 

Nevertheless Eduard spends several hours every day working in the field like almost all the others in the small village of St Patrick. Only older inhabitants and children do not have to work, although they often help out as much as their health or school work allows. The village is not marked on any map and lies right next to the “Mile 4” Hospital. Originally this village was the leprosy colony that had to be at least “four miles distant from Abakaliki”.

 

The village is still there and, in the meantime, has been running itself. The people here jointly decided to master life together so as to be strong enough to face up to it, which is precisely the point of community-based rehabilitation. Many of the people here have had leprosy and their impairments are a result of this disease.

 

At the centre is the self-help group, which takes decisions democratically for the well-being of the whole community. Equal rights for persons with impairments, was also an important goal in Germany forty years ago. At that time the people in Germany had to learn that people with impairments are more likely to be able to work for the good of the community than to become a burden to it.

 

Today Eduard is knocking off work earlier, because the village community gets together every Monday. The agenda requires decisions that have to be made for the whole week: who will buy goods and from which market, who has already harvested and who will help with harvesting - peeling, drying, grinding and fermenting. They also have to decide what will be done with the income; who is to receive a sum for their work and what proportion of the income is to be allocated for machinery, tools or housing in the village.

 

Not far from the village square Eduard meets Dr Joseph Chukwu, DAHW’s Medical Advisor in Nigeria and the DAHW social worker Livinus Otu. Only four years ago Livinus Otu had organised the inhabitants of the village into a strong team. They had already planted cassava many years before, but at that time everyone had worked for themselves and there had been little left to sell.

 

Because joint decision-making has worked so well, the newly installed village community now meets regularly. The social worker Otu, who has been specially trained in development co-operation, is always at these meetings. His training and presence have paid off: in St Patrick no one looks now to see whether someone in the community has impairment or not.    

 

The links between the former leprosy patients and the “Mile 4” Hospital are still strong today. Members of the village community sell the majority of their cassava flour from market stalls in front of the hospital. Thus Dr Chukwu gets to see his former patients regularly and, like the other hospital employees, uses this opportunity to stock up on fresh food every day. “I pay no more here than at any of the town’s markets” says the Doctor elaborating on the success of the village community. “But when I see that these people can take care of providing for themselves, that they can live from work with their hands, then I am prepared to pay even more.”

 

Dr Chukwu and Livinius Otu are convinced that the village’s work is successful. The village has become a strong community, which takes care of its own elderly population and those who are pregnant. The clearest indication of success for the Doctor, who studied medicine in Vienna, is the cleanliness of the village. “When people take responsibility themselves, there is no longer any rubbish lying around. St Patrick is probably the cleanest village in the vicinity.”

Article by Jochen Hövekenmeier  

Translated by ILEP with the kind permission of DAHW

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: Members, Nigeria