Born on 08th July 1971 in Timbuktu, Lalla Tahara HAIDARA is down with polio in 1977. After years of fighting the disease in Timbuktu, in the university hospitals at Point G and Gabriel Touré in Bamako, in a Chinese hospital in Kati, she has hardly recovered some mobility. And she got late in her studies.
A brave woman, she followed first level studies to obtain diploma and she fight to become productive despite the difficult context of employment. Lalla has overcome these difficulties and obtained a diploma of Secretary Accountant in 1990.
Tirelessly, she sought employment and faced rejections, opposition, and negative answers due to her handicap. But this marginalisation is no frustration for her because her dream is to prove to the society in Timbuktu that handicapped persons can be as productive and take care of themselves.
She now has become a personality in Timbuktu; she organises handicapped women into an association for their integration in the economic life. To the conservatives who believe that a handicap is a divine curse, Lalla creates the Organisation of Handicapped Women in Timbuktu in 1998with two dozen women. She worked hard and obtained to build a training centre for handicapped women.
This centre before it closed in 2012 at the beginning of the crisis, has trained more than a hundred of women in sowing, cooking soap, managing a small company. This action has changed the mentality of the authorities, elected officials and even some conservatives ‘view vis-à-vis handicap.
It has enabled disabled persons to access credit and finance activities providing income. She has managed to obtain wheel chairs for most vulnerable women, and bikes adapted to disable persons. She enabled several health care action but also surgery for sick persons.
The security crisis in the North has come to stop the activities of her centre. Ms Cissé moved to Bamako with her family but continued to work for the members of her organisations whether they emigrated in the south or remained in Timbuktu
In order to fight unemployment, she created and opened a restaurant called « Mahtaj ». There she employs 6 persons among which four have a handicap.
As many citizen in Mali, she has her own vision for the solution of the conflict in the North. Lalla Tahara in a harsh tone says that « women are among the most affected by the war, because, most of the time, men have left the women to take charge alone of the children. We are not even listened to when we propose a solution. However, reality is that the solution is more an issue of development rather than secession or independentism issue. Life is expensive, there are no roads. A truck may need up to one week to bring us food and goods in Timbuktu ».
Ms Cissé also criticises the lack of higher schools and universities for young adults who obtained their baccalaureate. When everyone knows than even in Bamako life is not easy. « As a handicapped woman, I could not do big studies. Because I could not continue studying in Bamako because I could not find adapted lodgings ».
As a solution she proposes that the State takes its full responsibility and sees development holistically, giving attention to health, education, water, roads in all the northern regions.
For her, « weapons have their limit and could not bring us any real peace. We have to sit all together at the table to discuss clearly the issues and together reach a solution ». She adds: «as a mother I want a united and prosperous Mali with all her sons making peace from North to South in an Africa without war, in a peaceful world. »
«I don’t shave any complex in front of anybody despite my handicap which forbids me some moves she emotionally said. Indeed, her humility and her smile, her tears when she faces hardships met by others and her anger against injustice: these are the features that her friends quote.
