SLICE OF LIFE: I’m disabled. I’m also left-handed, heartily dislike olives, and can sing all the words to the Frozen theme song with my little sister

by | Apr 25, 2014 | Opinion

Class_2014_027I enter the lift, push my floor number and wait. Another girl, a stranger to me, stares at me for a while.“You know, you look kind of funny” she says conversationally.

Well, I had noticed that as a matter of fact, thank you very much. I am Robyn, and I am disabled. I have Möbius Syndrome something to do with cranial nerves and my development in the womb and shit (as a BA kid, I reserve the right to not know what doctors and so-called experts are talking about when they get into the biology of it all).

[pullquote]As I got older I finally realised things were the way they were, and I could either spend the rest of my life being miserable, or face the facts and try to find a way to move on.[/pullquote]

Basically, my face looks funny because my muscles didn’t develop properly before I was born. It led to partial facial paralysis, meaning I can’t make all the same facial movements as you, and my speech can be unclear at times. Only about one in every 275 000 people are born with it, but I guess I was just really, really lucky. My whole life, I’ve received the funny looks, snide comments and unbearable staring. It used to upset me. (It still can sometimes, if I’m honest.)

When I was 10 I cried for an entire night after some jerks in a line at an amusement park laughed and called me “some sort of Pokémon”. And then I grew up and decided that, in the immortal words of Popeye: “I yam what I yam”. As I got older I finally realised things were the way they were, and I could either spend the rest of my life being miserable, or face the facts and try to find a way to move on. God knows I would change it if I could, but these are the cards I was dealt, and I have to play them as best I can. But isn’t that something that all people do, not just the disabled ones?

Everyone is born to a set of circumstances they didn’t choose. Everyone spends their life fighting a battle against how people see them versus how they really are. I don’t want your sympathy, or expect you not to blink the first time you see me, or to be a model for Vogue magazine. All I want is for you to take my experience and use it to inform your own.

People aren’t all that different from one another really. The next time you see someone who is disabled, or comes from a different race or socio-economic class, or has some other little thing that we, as humans, use to draw a line between us and them, take a moment to remember that you are more than likely united in more things than you are divided.

Yes I am Robyn, and I am disabled. I’m also left-handed, and heartily dislike olives, and can sing all the words to the Frozen theme song with my little sister. Being disabled is a part of me, but I will not let it define me any more than my green eyes or my hairy toes do. Be careful of the aspects of people that you allow to define them.

OPINION: We the disabled, the invisible

by | Sep 20, 2013 | News

THE ISSUE of disabilities has always been a sore point for the university and, barring a few extraordinary individuals, it has been treated with reluctance and a measure of reservation.
Everybody in management knows how to talk the talk to impress university stakeholders and guests. But the reality is much different.
 
When having a conversation with the head of the disability unit, Dr Anlia Pretorious, one learns quickly that she undoubtedly has the credentials and the profile of a person who understands and has worked alongside people living with disabilities. That is commendable, but one cannot help but ask whether she uses these qualities to serve the community of differently abled persons?
 
To date, apart from a few technological upgrades and renovations at the main disability unit offices, there is yet to be tangible changes for the differently abled.
Students are still left to the mercy of a system that is ignorant to their needs. Apart from a few intermittent awareness campaigns, that are known to be hamstrung by bureaucracy, not much has gone towards achieving solutions except for the odd individual case.
 
It is safe to state that Dr Pretorious is not being given the space to operate to the best of her ability.
The disability unit needs a strong, reliable person as a head who will understand the nature and the social position of the student that comes to its doors needing assistance.
 
These are mostly previously disadvantaged youths aspiring to obtain a worthy qualification so that they can lead better lives.
 
Does anybody hear us, or see us, or is willing to ‘walk’ with us?
 
Emzalaga