I’m so happy to be back in Nepal as I really love this country and its people. A few weeks ago I decided to pick up basketball again. I headed to a court in Samakhushi but it was too crowded and I decided to go to Thamel. There I found a court, put on my basketball shoes and was all ready to go. Some guys asked me to play and I said yes. Because I lived in a village in Siraha I hadn’t played for one year as there were no courts available.
I scored a basket, went back to defend and directly after that felt a huge pain in my right foot. As I lay writhing in pain on the cement court floor, holding my right ankle, the other players looked at me and said, “There is a crack from the earthquake which you stepped in”. I proceeded to get a couple of guys to help me off the court, found a taxi and went to the International Clinic where an orthopedic doctor who has treated me before gasped as I took off my sock and looked at my ankle which was severely swollen. After an x-ray indicated that I had a hairline fracture, I was wrapped in plaster until most likely, early September, using crutches as the only way of “walking”.
I was for the second time in Nepal temporarily disabled (last time it was my left foot and this time my right). But I didn’t want to let this slow me down. The thing for me is that working on sports with people with disabilities has helped me to be more empathetic but being, even temporarily disabled, puts me into a totally different frame of empathy.
How many of us even give a second thought to the multi-story buildings and the number of stairs which we might have to climb on a daily basis or even if a building is one story, getting through the front door? Or what about those squat toilets in which we have to climb a few steps to use? How about just walking and the uneven pavement? What about getting into and out of public transportation? The list goes on.
I have many friends who are in wheelchairs and I start to imagine what they have to go through when they travel. When a person with physical disability needs to take public transportation in their daily routine, or find an accessible toilet how do they do this? What about when they travel to their home district? Forget about getting off of a bus, going to a restaurant and finding a toilet that is not downstairs. It seems that the able bodied community has set up barriers, not necessarily to purposely exclude the 6-10% of the population that have a disability, but never-the-less, without much sensitivity this is the result.
I know from working on disability issues that there is so much which can be done by all of us but especially the business community. Businesses can proactively promote hiring people with disability by extending reasonable accommodation, ensuring working on the ground floor or changing the height of desks, providing accessible restrooms. This isn’t about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and doesn’t take much money but does take commitment and a certain degree of empathy. By not doing this we are wasting the intellectual abilities of persons with disability. But in order for this to occur there must be more pushing from civil society and the numerous NGOs working in the disability field.
The recent earthquake remains a great tragedy. But this also has created incredible space and opportunity to build back a better Nepal. Given the mental toughness of the Nepali people all it takes is a bit of resources and a positive attitude. We all just need to acknowledge the cracks in the proverbial basketball court, not overlook them, letting others know that they exist and then repair them so that they don’t occur again.
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