Help yourself or One day in a wheelchair

Life is rough. And especially for physically challenging people. Have you ever wondered about difficulties they face everyday? Going shopping, or anywhere else. And have you ever imagined yourself in their shoes?

The news agency “24.kg” decided to have an experiment and see how it feels to travel around the city in a wheelchair.  Here I would like to make it clear, I did not intend to make fun of people or cheat on them. I honestly explained that I am not disabled, but a journalist trying to figure out if it possible to survive in Bishkek if you ride a wheelchair. The experiment turned out to be tough and shocking in many ways, but still worth doing it.

Step, one more step…

Riding a wheelchair is not an easy thing to do. I have never thought it would be that hard. I was stumbling all the time and it took me great efforts to take my wheels out of holes and cracks of the sidewalks. I was about to fail me experiment 10 minutes after it started.

Jeep is the best solution for sidewalks…

...Or a tank is even better. I must admit, I was very nervous, my hands and fingers were failing me, sweat was coming down my face and heart was jumping out of me.

It took me half an hour to ride 10 meters up the sidewalk and I felt completely exhausted. Then my colleagues were helping us (wheelchair and I became one) to overcome countless obstacles on our way. They were cracking jokes, trying to make me feel better. But the hardest thing was yet to come. The first slap in the face came from a little girl following us on her bike. She was inspecting me all the way up the street and when I asked her if she wants me to give her a ride on my wheelchair, she shocked me with her insolence. “Yeah, right! I am not an invalid, like you!” the girl said sarcastically and rode away.

There's some good in the world

The second surprise found me near the Caravan shopping center. Caravan is one of the few shopping centers in Bishkek which has entrance ramps. What a humanism! But even here it was absolutely impossible for me to climb a way too high ramp without somebody’s assistance. When my co-workers finally brought me in it was a nice hall, but the second and the third floors were unreachable for me, they have only step-escalators. However, I managed to go down to the bottom floor were they have big grocery store Stolichniy. There leads a nice sloping escalator, but I still had to pull the brakes all the time in order not to fall behind.

After that we headed for a National Surgery Center to see if hospitals offer easier ways for disabled to get in. Instead all my hope was snatched away. There were two narrow ramps to the both sides from the entry, which fit only for children carriages and a paved walk-down. After 10 minutes of freeze I turned for help to two young women passing me by. “No time for you girl. Help yourself,” a “warm-hearted” lady said.  I was speechless…

Sitting there for 10 minutes with a hopeless look and a lump in my throat, I was already about to cry, “Take it easy, girl. I will help you out,” said a young man pushing my wheelchair up the ramp. Now I know for sure, there are good men in the world.

The next point of destination was a regular apartment house on Toktogul Street. There the situation is quite the same, no entrance ramps, narrow doorways and too high steps. It seems that no disabled people live there. But they do. And how they do is already another story.

City Hall is not for disabled ones

I did not manage to get into the City Hall house and did not ask for help either. I felt terrible seeing officials turning away pretending they did not see me. “Excuse me, are disabled not admitted here? What if I have a social issue to be solved? Have you read the Law On “social care for disabled?” I asked with a feeling of pique.

“No disabled come here. Our laws unfortunately exist only on paper, nobody observes them. Go better to Parliament, they write laws and they should control if they are well-observed,” a smoking man said and started dialing numbers on his cell phone.

Last meters

On our way back to the agency we crossed couple of streets and once again made sure that nobody and no one cares about disabled people in Bishkek, neither authorities nor regular people. Passersby were staring at me as if I were a monkey. The world seemed so huge to me and I was so small and helpless. The experiment was coming to its end. I felt completely worn out both mentally and physically. I had no emotions left, absolutely empty. The experiment was over, but I had this strange feeling inside. A feeling of guilt and despair…