” When I was 5 years old, I was hit by a car while crossing the road. I was accompanying a friend to the market I remember. At the hospital, the doctor said the wound had developed, and that I had to be amputated or I risked death.

The next day I woke up with only one leg. I used to ask my grandmother all the time when I was going to get my feet right. I didn’t understand what was going on, I was only 5 years old, I was a child. I thought the legs were like the teeth, that it grew back.

When I was 10, friends would laugh at me for having only one foot. I came home crying every day. Because of this unbearable stigma I ended up dropping out of school at the age of 11. Today, when I see those who have finished school, how well they speak French, I regret it.”

By Vincent Tremeau