Peace has been making Kenkey, a popular Ghanaian staple made from fermented maize, for many years but her business collapsed in 2012 when her husband had a serious accident. She used all her savings to pay for his medical care and had no capital to continue her trade. The ATE grant in 2014 enabled her to restart her business and help it to grow. She saved up her money to take up training to learn how to make soap and buy the materials to manufacture and package it.
Peace is also a seamstress and has been sewing her whole life. She still makes money from her sewing here and there but for a long time she was unable to give it her attention as a business due to the demands of caring for her daughter. In 1997, her daughter, Blessing, who was just two years old at the time, started having convulsions and over time the full extent of her disabilities became apparent. They visited many hospitals over the next few years and Peace became increasingly engaged in Blessing’s care, whoat twenty years old is unable to talk, walk or feed herself. Visits to see specialists in more and more distant hospitals became increasingly difficult to finance and options for residential care were both inadequate and unaffordable.
Peace is restrained in discussing the strain of managing to meet the care needs of her daughter whilst raising her three other children and caring for the five older children by her husband’s first marriage. Peace is a religious woman and she bears the difficulties she has faced in her life with a great amount of dignity. She explains that now the children are grown, they all pull together to help with Blessing’s care and her burden is lessened, but when they were younger she had no option but to stay at home full time. She compares the time before when she was able go to the market to sell kenkey, when nobody knew her background, to then only being able to make a small amount of money selling from the house. She found that people simply stopped buying from her when they discovered her daughter’s condition. The stigma surrounding disability, particularly in deprived areas such as Lawra District in the Upper Western Region of Ghana is still very strong, though Peace is careful not to go into detail or pass judgement on people’s beliefs or treatment of her and her daughter.
Since being referred to ATE’s Special Needs Awareness Programme (SNAP), Peace has been attending SNAP meetings every month for two years. It was at a SNAP meeting through talking to Operations Manager, Habib, that she came to know about ATE’s small business grants, wrote an application and was granted funds to rebuild her business. In terms of her business venture into soap, she says that she feels some pressure to make it work as she is the only breadwinner in her household so she is striving to make it a success. She finds it difficult to convince some customers of the quality of her detergent as they usually prefer to buy brands which are not locally made but she has been targeting offices in the town, making regular sales in bulk to chop bars and she will try negotiating to sell in bulk to some of the local provisions stores. She has plans and ideas for expanding her skill set and her product line and will continue with her training. With the profit she is making with her sales on Kenkey she is also going to fund herself to learn how to sew suits and wedding dresses
Peace feels that SNAP has also been immensely helpful. Staying at home with her disabled child was incredibly isolating. At times, she says that she used to find herself sitting alone and weeping, or find herself walking aimlessly not knowing where she was going. She went to see a doctor who advised her to socialise and start to open up and talk about the challenges she faces. Through joining the SNAP group she has met other people in a similar situation, she saw that she was not alone and realised that some families struggle to care for children with even more profound disabilities than Blessing. She’s made a lot of friends through the group and now when she goes to the market she smiles as she says that people are calling to her from all over the market to greet her.
Through the educational SNAP workshops Peace says she has learnt a lot about taking care of herself and her daughter’s health and hygiene, how to interact with Blessing and help her to have a fuller life. Peace explains that because Blessing cannot walk, she didn’t used to give her any exercise and because she cannot talk, she didn’t used to communicate with her but now she talks to her all the time, even if she doesn’t understand everything she says. She tells her when it is meal time or bath time and she can see that Blessing expresses sheer delight, particularly when she is coming to SNAP where she gets to socialise and has her own friends. Peace says she can see a lot of changes in her daughter. The smile on Blessing’s face at SNAP meetings speaks volumes about how important this group is to her and the families who attend on a regular basis. The ATE support provided through SNAP together with the small business granthave made a positive impact on Peace and Blessing’s lives and for this Peace is very grateful.