Jani Dede is 91-years-old today, and he has been walking for most of his life with a prosthetic leg he built himself in 1950, after losing his limb during a WWII bombardment in 1943.
Jani remembers how the night of November 3rd, 1943, changed his life entirely. Missiles launched from German warships killed his brother and made him lose his leg.
It was hard to make it in those years of poverty and difficulty, but nevertheless, four years later he started a job.
“I was building buckets from iron sheets at the flour factory. Then they moved me to Vlora. I had asked the government for a prosthetic leg, but they weren’t able to get one. Then, a friend of mine told me that there was a guy who used to build prosthetic legs. I saw him work and I thought I could do mine better, so I built one myself”, Jani says.
Since then, he has walked with that leg for the rest of his life, making small repairing time after time.
“Mine is even better than some foreign ones that I’ve used because those were made for flat areas. I have adapted mine to our steep terrain”, he says.
One year later he got married to the woman who gave him three children and his life, as Jani says because without her he would not have been able to make it.
“She has helped me as a woman and as a man. She has played the father’s role as well because I was sick for a long time and stayed hospitalized. She raised our children among many difficulties”, Jani says.
“We may have lived better than others because we had a good understanding. We were poor, but there was love as well. When my sister saw him for the first time, back then, she said that death would have been better than living with him. But I think I have been happier than women who married husbands with two legs”, says his wife, Amalia Dede.
Today they are each others’ best friends, but also parents of three children.
“He has had physical-demanding jobs for his entire life. He has worked harder than anyone and had no invalidity pension”, says Kristo, Jani’s son.
Jani says that his biggest passion in life was working.
“When you have a strong will, you can achieve anything. People can make it in life only if they have a strong will to work. Work is the source of everything in life”, says the 90-year-old man.
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