Meet Mustafa.

 

He needs our help.

 

Mustafa did not have a hand out asking for assistance. We met him through his good friend, our guide. We were so inspired by his

spirit that we knew immediately that we needed to do something to help.

 

You see, if he lived in most other places in the world, his medical conditions would be easily treated. But where he lives in Ourrzazate, Morocco, a seven-hour drive from the major city of Marrakech, the only way to save his life now requires amputating both legs below the knees. He has already lost several fingers to his illness.

 

We found the single parent and his young son living in a cramped but tidy two room apartment. The multipurpose main room serves as kitchen, living room and Mustafa’s bedroom, while the other room houses his son’s bed. The only bathroom is a communal squat toilet that is shared among all the residents on his floor. When Mustafa’s wife left him because of his medical problems, his young son stepped in to help him with everything. This pains Mustafa, perhaps even more than his condition.

 

The medications and supplies Mustafa needs costs around $80 USD per day. This total doesn’t include pain medication, which is a luxury he cannot afford. Every few days he struggles for than two hours unwrapping

layers of soiled bandages, haltingly cleaning his swollen, deformed extremeties, applying medications and then rebandaging. Sweat beads on his brow as his face twists in pain behind the paper mask that protects

him from the stench of his dying flesh.

 

On the day we met Mustafa in late October 2015, we took a trip to the pharmacy where he purchases his supplies. The pharmacist showed us a notebook with page after page of entries totaling thousands of dollars of credit the store has extended to him. We pooled our funds to pay off a small part of his bill in addition to purchasing one day of medications and supplies.

 

A representative of an Italian non-governmental agency that specializes in sustainable tourism in Morocco has graciously offered to collect and distribute funds to Mustafa to cover his daily treatments, transport to and

from the hospital in Marrakech the surgery, which is currently scheduled for December, and pay off his pharmacy debt.