Giving People a Voice with Nana Marfo

“Society may think that disabled people are losing the battle of living a normal life, but in reality, we are living our best life, just in a unique manner” I am Nana Marfo is a young man from South London and I an aspiring disability advocate. Nana was born over three months premature and lived his first two years in a glass box, which left him with a lifelong disability called tracheal stenosis, which nearly destroyed his ability to speak. Everything started to unravel when I went to primary school, a big word…. Disability. Primary schools couldn’t fund me to go to their schools, so my mum took me out of the school systems, and I was home a schooled for 3-4 years. Nana lives and breathes through an artificial tracheostomy tube. It doesn’t affect his brain, but just his breathing and he cannot do too much exercise due to exhaustion. Growing up Nana Struggled with his was race and his disability. His peers didn’t quite understand his disability and he got teased. It took him quite a while for him to realise that he was disabled, and things weren’t the same for him as with others. Overall, Nana has had 210 surgeries to his neck and a lot of skin grafting as a child, proclaiming, “it was like World War three.” Nana has grown into a fine man, empowering the voiceless with our communities and helping people realise how injustice exists and that there is something we can do about it! Nana has been discriminated against in his workplace for his disability and the colour of his skin and now stands up for people, even if they do not have a voice. “Because I never had a voice, I wanted to make sure that others had a voice.” Nana now runs Unique Abilities, an organisation that recognises people with different shades, different shapes, and a platform of people with disabilities to be themselves. “Make your pain your story, don’t dwell on it, your life doesn’t end with your tragedy.” Resources: