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"I know what it's like to live without a limb: that's why I want to learn how to make the best legs possible," Mohamed Marras, 34, from Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Mohamed is a bench worker at the orthopedic workshop of the National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) in Freetown, Uganda. During SwissLimbs’, training mission to the centre he benefited from being a participating student acquiring new skills but, in the future, will also be the recipient of a replacement prosthesis too.
When Mohammed was 13 years old, the car he was travelling in to visit his grandmother skidded and crashed into a wall. At the scene of the accident his mother made the choice to take her son to a traditional healer. After a month of having hot leaves packed on his wound by the sorcerer, his leg became gangrenous. Mohammed begged his mother to take him someplace else and by the time he was admitted to
hospital the infection was so widespread, his leg had to be amputated.
In the years following the accident, his mother saved up to buy him a leg. This she was able to achieve in 2014 but the past 7 years, the wear and tear on his prosthesis means it no longer affords Mohammad a satisfactory level of mobility.
Despite his challenges in mobility Mohammed courageously became involved with the NRC orthopedic workshop. There he learned to maintain his own leg and later, how to
build others. Since 2019 he has been employed as a bench worker and his dream is to become a trained orthopedic technician. Mohammed wants to learn how to make the best possible prosthetics for his future patients, which is why he decided to attend the SwissLimbs training.
