A STUDENT who was shot in the head five times when soldiers raided her home has said it left her face “divided in two”.
Bah Median Ekue, 22, from Bamenda, Cameroon, was nearly buried after military raided her family home – she had to beg neighbours with her hands to take her to hospital instead.
The horrifying attack happened when Bah was just 14.
Soldiers barged into her family home while she slept and shot her once in the leg, then five times in the face.
Her family escaped without her, and she had to beg neighbours to take her to hospital.
Bah said: “My face was divided into two, my community thought they should go and bury me.
“I had to use my hands to beg them to take me to the hospital, so I wasn’t left to die.”
Doctors also didn’t think Bah would survive – the bottom part of her face was completely mutilated.
But the teen had three facial reconstructions, which took skin from her leg to repair her face.
Bah spent a year recovering in hospital and has been left with disfigurements to her face.
She has lost her ability to smell and can only see out of her right eye, and is raising money for seven more facial reconstruction operations.
The surgeries will cost a huge $65K, and a fundraising appeal has been launched to help cover the medical bills.
The GoFundMe appeal has a target of $13K and says that the 22-year-old is “seriously in need of our help to get her back on the path of full recovery”.
It asks people to put their hands in their pockets for Bah, “to give her back her confidence, make her feel like a human and loved”.
The post adds: “The Ayah International foundation which is helping her, has seen all her accounts frozen and can no longer foot the bills.”
Bamenda became a battleground between government forces and rebels demanding an independent state in 2017, when peaceful protests from the English-speaking minority spiralled into a full-scale conflict.
Bah’s cousin had begun protesting against the repressive regime when their family home was raided in the middle of the night.
Her cousin was not home and the soldiers shot Bah in her sleep instead.
She said: “The military came to kill the boy and he wasn’t at home that day, I was shot in place of him.
“I was unfortunately in a very deep sleep.
“When they kept firing, a brother of mine came to wake me up to run away.
“He jumped through the window and ran away to bushes, I wanted to jump with him through the window but I didn’t have the strength to, because I was very sick.
“I decided to use the door, as I was trying to run to the bush, the military men caught up with me.
“First I was shot in my leg. I was pleading them not to kill me, but unfortunately they shattered my face completely.”
She said: “At first, the people in the community where I lived also thought I was dead because it was really terrible.
“I was taken to a local hospital, and they refused to admit me, saying that I would only live for up to three days.
“From there, I was taken to a big hospital in the northwest of Cameroon called Mingo Baptist Hospital, where I was admitted and taken immediately to the theatre.
“They weren’t expecting that I would live.”
She has struggled since to fit back into society since the brutal attack.
Bah said: “I don’t feel comfortable anywhere I go because people are always looking and laughing at me.
“They see me differently, and I always feel like I am in different world.
“I will be unable to smell, or see well again. I’m unable to live a normal life like any other young girl out there.”
