“The doctors, they told me I wouldn’t live past 5, 10, 20 years old. ‘You will die soon’, they told me,” said Betty Sowah, who turned 60 years old a few weeks ago. “Now I’m here, running my business.”

Betty owns and operates Nai-Aakor Fashions, a professional sewing and alterations shop, out of a pantry-turned-sewing room in her Edmond home. She’s been sewing since she was 21 years old, but she’s been battling Sickle Cell Anemia her entire life.

Sickle Cell Anemia is a blood disease that causes irregularly shaped red blood cells. As a result of her illness, Betty often experiences long bouts of excruciating pain in her back and limbs. Since she was young, she’s taken many trips to the hospital for pain medication and blood transfusions to treat blood clots caused by the disorder.

“[Sickle Cell] stopped my from my education. I wanted to be a nurse,” said Betty. “With Sickle Cell, I couldn’t go away to school. So I went to trading school in the same town I lived in.”

Betty started sewing as a young woman in Ghana, when her parents sent her to a trade school in Accra. Now, she’s a master seamstress. She ran a sewing business in Ghana for 12 years before moving to the US in 1993. She’s had two children and run Nai-Aakor Fashions for the last decade. Betty can sew a traditional African dress in a few hours with just four measurements and a reference photo.

Betty says Sickle Cell makes running a business difficult, but not impossible. She says her secret to staying strong is simple;

“I don’t know how God does it, but I put my faith in God and He renews me every day,” says Betty. “I pray God to give me inner peace and then give me the strength to move on, to face another day. He does it. He does it for me every time.”

Get in touch with Nai-Aakor Fashions by emailing Betty at [email protected].
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