Every morning, Chouchou* would hear the sound of other children going to school.
She would sit outside her home in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo and listen to them pass. She was 10 years old and had never been to school herself. Without a prosthetic leg, without crutches, and without the money her grandmother Deba* needed to get her there, she simply stayed where she was.
This had been her life since she was one year and four months old — the age she was when rebels came to her home, shot her parents dead, and left a bullet lodged in her knee.
Her leg was amputated in Angola, where Deba fled with Chouchou and other family members to escape the violence. When the DRC’s new authorities instructed Congolese families to return, they went back. That was 2018 — and for the years that followed, Chouchou stayed home.
“I felt very bad because all my friends had legs,” she says.
The day everything changed
In 2023, a headteacher named Patience was walking house to house through the neighbourhood. She was part of Save the Children’s AXE‑Filles programme — designed to find children who had fallen out of education and bring them back in.
She found Chouchou sitting outside.
“Why are you sitting while the others are going to school?” Patience asked.
“I don’t have the means,” Chouchou replied.
Deba explained the situation. Patience wrote down Chouchou’s name.
The next morning, Patience returned. She lifted Chouchou onto her back and carried her to school.
“When she told me her story, it touched me,” Patience says. “I didn’t want to leave her.”
It was a five‑kilometre walk that took half an hour. Patience did it almost every day for six months — there and back, morning and afternoon — fitting it around running the school and caring for her own family. On days she couldn’t come, Chouchou would say the next morning: “You didn’t come to pick me up. How was I going to come?”
“I told her,” Patience says, “that if there’s no help, I’ll still carry you, every day.”
What it meant to walk through the door
On her first day at school, Chouchou was shy. She sat at the edge of the room, unsure how to take part.
After three days, everything changed.
She began sharing ideas. She started playing with the other children. She moved from the edge of the room to the front of the class. Her classmates formed groups to play with her. She talked about the future — “I would like to be a seamstress,” she said, “if someone would give me the support I need.”
Save the Children made sure she had everything she needed: a uniform, a bag, notebooks, pens. After six months, she received crutches so she could begin making her own way. Later, through our partner Humanity & Inclusion, she received a prosthetic leg — something that completely transformed her days.
“I’m very happy as I received my plastic leg,” she says. “I play games with friends. Me and my two friends, Carene and Marie, we play games on the floor.”
The girl who leaps
After school, Chouchou does something that tells you everything about who she is.
She takes off her prosthetic leg. She leaves it with her grandmother along with her crutches. And then she plays Oli — a game like dodgeball, using sand‑filled bottles — leaping into the air and landing perfectly on one leg, dodging throws with astonishing balance and strength.
She is not cautious. She is not fragile. She is a 10‑year‑old who knows exactly what her body can do — and she does it with joy.
“Since she got the plastic leg there’s been a change,” says Deba. “She plays so much now. She draws water for me — something she couldn’t do before.”
In class, she sits at the front. When the teacher asks her to come to the board, she gets up and goes — still wearing her Save the Children rucksack, which she likes to keep on even during lessons. She is fully engaged. She enjoys every subject.
When she finishes her studies, she wants to become a tailor.
What made this possible
Chouchou’s story is about her resilience — a resilience that was always there, waiting to be seen.
But it is also about the people around her: Deba, who never stopped trying to find a way forward; Patience, who refused to accept that a child sitting outside a hut was where her story should end; and Save the Children supporters whose gifts made the AXE‑Filles programme, the school supplies, the crutches and the prosthetic leg possible.
It’s your support — combined with our expertise, with children’s determination, and with the commitment of teachers like Patience — that makes this transformation possible.
Patience and Chouchou still walk home together sometimes, holding hands, chatting quietly. Their bond is clear to everyone who sees them.
Children like Chouchou need support that lasts
A blast injury doesn’t end on the day it happens. For Chouchou, the consequences shaped every year that followed — the years she spent at home, the mobility she lost, the schooling she missed, the childhood put on pause.
Recovery takes time. It takes prosthetics that must be replaced as children grow. It takes teachers trained in inclusive education. It takes programmes that go looking for the children who have been left behind.
A monthly gift to Save the Children helps fund all of this — the emergency response, the long journey back, and the chance for a future.
*Names have been changed to protect identities
