Yusif was 5 years old when a snake bit his hand in a village in Sierra Leone, near Mariba Town.
The pain spread up to his elbow, and before long his whole arm was bruised and blistered. There was no ambulance. A traditional healer gave him herbs to swallow, but they didn’t work. His mother, Mariama, saved what she could to take him to a hospital. There, the doctors talked about amputation. She said no.
As the years passed, the dead skin on his arm contracted. Embarrassed, Yusif stopped playing soccer and hid his arm under his shirt. He waited seven years for a solution, until the hospital ship Global Mercy, run by the NGO Mercy Ships, opened the door to free reconstructive surgery for him.
Now, according to the organization, Yusif can use his arm again and go back to school. A boy who could have lost an arm and still has it because his mother refused to accept ““there was no way to fix it””.