Positive News · 8 hours ago

How a Farming Project in Sierra Leone Helps Amputees Rebuild Lives

After Sierra Leone's civil war left nearly 30,000 people without limbs and, too often, without dignity, pastor-turned-farmer Mambud Samai refused to accept that this was simply how things had to be. Through his initiative Farming on Crutches, he has taught over 100 amputees to grow food sustainably, turning smallholder plots into sources of income, community, and self-determination. One early participant, Mustapha Bockarie - once told by friends that he was a burden - now runs a community farm, raises goats, and keeps bees, his transformation a quiet rebuke to every assumption made about what a person with limb loss can do. When a 2024 cohort built a more accessible wheelbarrow from bamboo and bicycle wheels, participant Zainab Makieu offered a reminder that carries weight well beyond the farm: "disability is not inability." What Samai has built is less a farming program than a proof of something - that when one person carries a skill back from the margins and places it in someone else's hands, the reach of a single act of belief can travel far.