Happiness Audu, the beautiful figure in the above cover picture, was not born that way. She came that way after an electric shock. At the current level of medical and technological development in Nigeria, all that could be done was to yank off the lower section of the hands.
Her situation has certainly been a nightmare for her, friends and family. But if you think she is sitting at home crying or brooding over the accident, you have got it wrong. It is not the least of her worries but it is also not the highest of her worries. Rather, at the hierarchy of her worries is how to finish her Ordinary Level, another name for the West African School Certificate, (WASC) which pupils write at the end of the secondary school. That is the ambition driving her now.
The snag is, however, that there is very little she can do on her own in that regard, materially speaking. Her mother, Mrs Audu, a widow is not such an alternative either. That leaves Happiness Audu with just the burning ambition to get over secondary school and then see what could follow. Well, she might b down financially as far as the resources to return to as well as cope with schooling in her condition but, ideationally, she is confident that, somehow, she will get there.
It is an unfolding story which Intervention is still following, including another meeting with her in their home in Gwagwalada in Abuja, Nigeria. Happiness is a commentary on Nigeria: if the country were technologically developed, doctors would probably have found another way of dealing with the shock. Or if there were no alternatives to amputation, she would not be left the way she is now without some functional replants.
