Woman lives in a bucket

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That appears to be a severed head

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Meet Rahma Haruna — the teenage girl who’s forced to live her life in a plastic bucket after her arms and legs stopped growing.

“I’ve spent 15 years searching for the cure,” her father, Hussaini, told Barcroft.

The 19-year-old had been born perfectly healthy in the village of Lahadin Makole, close to the Nigerian city of Kano, before doctors noticed she had mysteriously stopped hitting key developmental milestones as an infant.

“From 6 months when she learned how to sit, that was when it began,” explained her mother, Fadi. “She started with a fever and that was it. Then stomach pains. Then her body parts like hands and legs … She didn’t learn how to crawl.”

Her family spent thousands on experts and treatments in the attempt to fix what was wrong with her, but to no avail.

“I sold almost everything in my possession,” Hussaini said. “I farm, go to the market and lots more looking for money to pay for her bills. Only God knows the real amount of what I had spent.”

But while doctors have been baffled about Haruna’s condition, she’s been looking on the bright side of things.

“I thank God in everything I do,” she said. “I want to start a business. A grocery store and anything people buy, that is what I want.”

With help from her 10-year-old brother, Fahad — and the rest of her family — Haruna spends her days in Kano begging for spare change and other donations.

She can barely move a muscle and is confined to a bucket no bigger than a crock pot.

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