"People thought I was a strange girl, because I was different. Pretty much as soon as I was born, people would tell my mother to get rid of me because nobody would marry a girl like this."

"No-one knew what the matter with me was. Disabilities were not understood in my village at the time, and nobody knew what cerebral palsy was. People in the village would tell my family that I was a punishment from a previous life.... I was too young to remember but my auntie who lived with us told me that my body was like a rag doll. A few villagers argued that she should be thrown into the river and left to drown. But I was literally saved by my father. He physically had to intervene to stop my body from being taken from our home and discarded like an object... I remember when families would come over to our house to check if I would be suitable for their son... I'd dress up in traditional clothes and sit in our small living room. When the families who came over saw my condition, they would say to my family, 'You expect our son to marry this?' And then leave."

From "'They wanted to drown me at birth - now I'm a poet'" (BBC).