CNN
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On a hectic weekend in Freetown, Sierra Leone, dozens of other folks acquire to observe a day soccer fit now not in contrast to numerous others you’d in finding any place else on the planet. But there’s one putting distinction – those gamers are all amputees.
They’re participants of the Single Leg Amputee Sports Association (SLASA), a company co-founded by means of pastor Mambud Samai in 2001 after he returned house towards the tip of Sierra Leone’s fatal civil warfare, which lasted from 1991 to 2002 and killed a minimum of 50,000 other folks around the nation. Thousands extra had been left with lacking limbs all the way through a brutal marketing campaign to terrify the civilian inhabitants.
After coming throughout a refugee camp stuffed with masses of amputees, Samai felt forced to lend a hand. “At that time, there were no activities like trauma recovery for them. So, amputees believed that once they lost their limbs and their legs, they have no future, they have no opportunity. So, I volunteered myself to give them confidence,” he stated.
While on the refugee camp, he met an American missionary who presented him to a type of adaptive soccer. After appearing the amputees learn how to play, the reaction was once overwhelming and SLASA was once shaped, “to give hope to the amputees, to give confidence to the amputees, and to allow them to become ambassadors of peace,” Samai stated.
According to the World Amputee Football Federation, gamers can not use prosthetics and as an alternative energy around the box on crutches. Each staff has seven gamers at the box at a time, with outfield gamers best having one leg and goalkeepers best having one arm.
Several SLASA gamers have since long past directly to compete in world techniques together with the World Amputee Football Championships, Amputee Africa Cup of Nations, and the Open European Amputee Football Championship.
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“Most of them are now very proud that they can represent their country at international competitions,” Samai stated. “They are contributing something back to society.”
Samai says the game isn’t just a just right type of workout, however it unites gamers and serves as a “therapy” for warfare sufferers to stand their shared trauma. “We try to give them hope and then give them the credibility that they are useful, they are important to society,” he stated.
Ali Badara Kamara is a goalkeeper within the SLASA league. He says he’s thankful for the life-changing alternatives he’s won. “My mother was afraid (for) me to play football because she sees me as an amputee. She thought that if I fell on the floor, I would have another problem,” he says. “But SLASA (has) taken me to Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania.”
Kamara is among the greater than 80 million other folks with disabilities dwelling around the continent. According to the United Nations, that determine comprises the ones with psychological well being stipulations, start defects and different bodily impairments. With assistive units regularly unavailable or unaffordable, many in finding employment laborious to come back by means of and are left begging at the streets.
While soccer suits best remaining 90 mins, Samai’s newest undertaking is to have the opportunity to lend a hand amputees past the pitch.
“My passion (is) to make sure that every life, irrespective of your disability or irrespective of your background, that you are able to be happy and you are able to smile at the end of the day,” Samai stated.
To succeed in that, SLASA works intently with the National Rehabilitation Center in Sierra Leone and companions with world organizations like SwissLimbs to supply prosthetics for amputees and educate native technicians.
In 2018, Samai traveled to Japan to review sustainable agriculture management and group building. Upon his go back, he started providing categories on sustainable agriculture thru SLASA.
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SLASA additionally assesses participants’ schooling and gives studying sources to these in want. Its purpose is to get extra amputees off the streets and supply them with a secure technique to make a dwelling for themselves and their households.
To date, Samai says SLASA has without delay assisted 350 amputees, and hopes to develop that quantity. The final purpose is to construct a legislation pitch and rehabilitation heart of its personal.
“We want Sierra Leone to compete with another countries in terms of development,” Samai stated. “We believe that disabled people should not be left behind.”
Watch the whole episode of African Voices that includes Mambud Samai right here.