The race of life is not won by the swift nor the powerful, but by those with the strong will to make good use of every moment their maker presents to them.
Some children through no faults of theirs grow up with certain physical challenges that make them often marginalized and are faced with lack of access to public health, education, and other social services that would ideally support and protect them.
Such is the case of Bless Ekpe, a 20 year old final year student of Adaklu-Anfoe Junior High School of the Volta Region. Growing up as a healthy child with high aspirations, her chances of success started fading when a hunch started growing at her back with her spines being strained.
Bless told Citi News she wasn’t born this way, but the hunch developed later, and this has greatly affected her mobility.
Bless, who is without a wheel chair to support her movement lamented she always feels pains in her spines anytime she tries to walk.
The situation had truncated her education such that, she had to stay home for years before going back to school. With the dream of becoming a nurse in future, Bless regardless of the hurdles and the pains, persistently struggled to come out of the shadows to pursue her dreams in the light.
She is one of the candidates in the ongoing Basic Education Certificate Examination, who wrote her exams on day one in Adaklu, lying prostrate on a student mattress.
Bless is challenged, but she is not allowing herself to be deterred, and hopes to fulfill her dreams.
She is among the many children in society who need a voice to speak for them; to let the world know that although the odds are against them, they still want to fight hard in the race of life in order to be counted among the winners.
But they cannot win this race alone without society’s support.