Dubai: The sweet smell of vanilla wafted into the room where 10 children, including Salwa Shahada, a nine-year-old Palestinian girl visiting Dubai, waited in earnest for the first batch of sugar cookies they had baked together on Saturday.
Born with only one arm, Salwa arrived in Dubai from the West Bank a week earlier to get medical treatment through the help of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), a non-political, non-profit organisation dedicated to healing the wounds of war, occupation and poverty for children in the Middle East.
“They told me that I’m going for treatment in Dubai,” Salwa told Gulf News with a smile while preparing for a mini baking session with the children of PCRF volunteers at Spontiphoria.
She is currently with a host family that has volunteered to take care of her while here.
The third of six children, Salwa’s family cannot afford to have her arm treated. Her left arm, which is just about an inch past her elbow, was not fully developed when she was born.
PCRF volunteers have brought her to Dubai for a three-week stay so she can be fitted with a myoelectric-controlled prosthesis, which will use the existing muscles in her residual limb to control its functions. Through it, she will be able to move and use the prosthetic arm and fingers just as she would if she had an arm.
“She likes baking and cooking, that’s why we brought her here,” Salwa’s host mum, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Gulf News.
“Obviously, the main purpose why she’s here is her medical treatment. But there is a lot of free time in between. For many of these children, it’s probably their first time in their life to travel, so we also try to fill it up with activities and get them to meet other children and show them around,” the Dubai host mum, who is also a Palestinian, said.
Salwa — in very few words — expressed how excited she is to have her new arm that will be fully operational in a week’s time. She was fitted with it last week and is currently undergoing a two-hour occupational therapy daily to allow her left arm muscles to adjust to it since she has not used them for nine years.
Despite being physically challenged, Salwa’s host mum said she exceeded her expectations.
“She’s very determined. I expected that if she’d have difficulties, I would need to help her a lot. But she’s confident and she dresses herself. She actually helps me out at home with my little son who’s two years and three months old. She bathes him and dresses him. She feeds him sometimes. She’s a very confident child.”
“She’s so loving and outgoing, very clever, content, very beautiful, and very smart.”
Asked what she would like to become when she grows up, Salwa said: “I want to be a dentist for little children. I was very impressed with the dentist who looked after me during my stay here in Dubai. That is why I’d like to be a dentist one day.”
She said the new prosthetic arm, courtesy of non-profit group Salam Ye Seghar, will definitely help her achieve that.
PCRF will follow her case until she turns 18. Salwa now joins the 80 other kids that the PCRF UAE Chapter has helped get medical treatment for burns, prosthetic eye fitting, complicated eye surgeries and the like. It is their way of giving back to society, Yara Al Saleh, president of PCRF UAE Chapter, said.
“Help is very important because all of these children come from underprivileged families. If we don’t help them, their families will not be able to afford the medical treatment. We’re helping to give them a better chance and a better life.”
