He's My Little Whirlwind

Elken’s right leg was amputated below the knee – but he’s not letting that slow him down

- Franco Havenga

LIKE most two-year-olds he’s a ball of energy, flying across the monkey bars, kicking his ball around, tearing around the garden – in fact, it makes you tired just looking at him.

Unlike most kids though, Elken Mynhardt has a prosthetic leg, a bright blue artificial limb complete with a little foot the same size as his left one.

Elken is so adept at getting around you barely notice his right leg doesn’t move quite the same as his left. For the little boy it’s just life – the only normal he’s ever known.

He was born without a fibula and an ankle in his right leg, the result of fibular hemimelia – the same congenital condition with which disgraced Paralympian Oscar Pistorius was born.

“Sometimes people ask me what happened to Elken and I’ll tell them,” his mom, Sumé Potgieter (22), says, chatting to us at a restaurant in her hometown of Polokwane in Limpopo.

When her little boy’s friends ask about it, she just tells them “his leg is gone and he has a new one now”.

As for Elken, he couldn’t be prouder of his artificial limb. “He still doesn’t understand that he’s different to other kids. I’ll have to explain it to him one day.”

But right now, he’s a happy, carefree little boy, exploring the world around him.

SUMÉ had no warning that there was any problem with her baby when she was pregnant – but as soon as Elken was born on 26 March 2017 and she glanced down at him, her heart stopped.

“I got such a fright,” she says. “Initially I thought he was missing both legs but then I realised only one had been affected.”

Later that day orthopaedic surgeon Dr Iwan Scott told the young mom about her son’s condition, and at first she was distraught.