Paris: the people, the places, and everything else

So.....

We got back from Paris on Sunday morning, exhausted. I have never been so tired in my whole life. We expected to come home tired, because in all seriousness, there was no way that we were going to do any sort of relaxing at all. After all, we were in Paris, and how often does that happen?

Prepare yourself for a pretty lengthy post. A lot happened and we were so busy that we had no time to update anything. Buckle up, it was an epic journey!

When we left Cape Town, we were super excited! My first trip solo. Well, not solo because if I were solo it would be an epic fail because. But, it was my first trip without my mom. What an experience it was, not just for me but for my sister, Erin, too. We learned so many things about ourselves and what we are capable of. I learned that I don't always need people to do so much for me and I can be more independent. And I think for Erin, it was very affirming of her abilities and her contribution as well.

Just getting to Paris was an interesting experience. Our first flight was from Cape Town to London and then from London to Paris. 16 hours or something in total. It was kind of weird travelling with my sister, not because I had any doubt of her abilities, because I didn't, but because my mom wasn't there and I'm used to travelling with her. It was all good. The one thing that we were stressing about was going to the bathroom on the plane. I'm sure that I am not the only disabled person who worries about toilets and things like that when travelling. It worked out well, though. My sister has bigger arm muscles than I thought. Impressive.

Our plane to Paris was delayed by an hour (we only found out about that when we were meant to be boarding). So, we had an extra hour to do....nothing. So much fun. And then, when we arrived in Paris, we went through almost the entire airport in one of the airport wheelchairs because we had to wait somewhere specific for my own wheelchair. This tends to stress a wheelchair user just a tiny bit.

We had to give them some time to get my wheelchair out of the plane and to where we were. So, we went to get our luggage from the carousel. It took forever. Then we had to wait for my wheelchair at a personnel lift. And we just waited, and waited, and waited. When my wheelchair did arrive, I got all excited and then we saw that my table was no longer attached to the wheelchair. Immediately, I started stressing because I use my table in everything that I do. After, communicating that it was missing and them understanding the situation, we waited again, for a while, and then the man came back up the lift, holding my table. Whew! I was just thinking about how I was going to do my speech without my table. It's not like I can just stand behind the podium...nobody would see me. I promise you, I nearly hugged the man!

We had a taxi from the airport to our hotel. Let's just say, our driver was really weird. Can't explain to you how weird. Can't.

It was strange in the neighbourhood where our hotel was because nobody was around and no shops were open at all. Then, we realised that it was a Sunday. And then it made sense. We did find the most amazing pizza place ever. It was so good.

My wheelchair decided to remind us that it is actually the boss of the relationship...again. We were not aware that a European adapter does not work everywhere in Europe. This makes little sense to me, but hey. We had to make a plan because my wheelchair needed to be charged. In the end, we had, I think, four different adapters on our original adapter. And then it didn't work. It was quite ridiculous. The next day, we got a single adapter that worked so that made life a lot easier.

Monday was a lot more alive. There were people around and we went to discover and explore Paris. We had so much fun. We did so many touristy things: We went to the louvre, arc de triomphe, notre dame, the eiffel tower, and of course, we went souvenir shopping for everybody back home. Nothing we went to see was a disappointment. Everything was as amazing as we had built it up to be in our minds.

We went to these tiny, amazing restaurants where we ate actual french fries and inside-out toasted sandwiches. Oh, that thing people say about baguettes being everywhere...no lies. Baguettes are everywhere! It's amazing.

On Tuesday, the conference started and it was time for business. The conference was really really interesting. There were some parts that were slightly out of my realm of understanding. But, it was an amazing learning experience. We met so many young people as well as ministers and others who are committed to making the youth an active participant in society and in education instead of simply being recipients all the time. Wednesday was my speech. I was really excited to present it because there were people there who were excited to hear what I have to say.

Throughout the conference, there were group sessions where we got an opportunity to share our views on certain issues relating to education and young people. It was very interesting to hear what other people think about things. Learn from their individual perspectives as well as the collective perspective they were representing.

One thing that proved very challenging at times, was getting around Paris. The taxi service was, at times, frustrating. We couldn't use the trains because the subways were pretty much entirely inaccessible. So, our only option was to use the bus. Let me tell you, it's really not a simple system. I guess, if you've grown up using them then it's much simpler to understand. But, if you are a tourist, and you don't speak french, it can be incredibly interesting. We learned that taking the wrong bus can add an extra hour to your journey. We took the wrong bus. It took forever.

On our last day we decided that we were going to go shopping. Our mission was to find an H&M. We found it. Eventually. After about four hours. We got SO lost. So lost.

We couldn't find the bus we needed to get on to get to the shopping part of Paris, so we decided to order a cab to get us there. It took 25 minutes to get to us but luckily it cost less than that and our driver was a really nice guy and he spoke english. bonus. We then tried to get our bearings but failed dismally because we walked - well, Erin walked, I wheeled but you catch my drift - for 20 minutes in the wrong direction and then had to walk 20 minutes back to our starting point. Every person that we spoke to told us a different thing and had very different ideas about how long 5 minutes are. Anyway, we got there and had so much fun. We also found a Mango. So good. Erin was suffering with her feet and walking so much. We had to get back to our hotel but we couldn't really find ourselves on our tourist map. We asked a cab driver to order us an accessible taxi because he spoke french. Very helpful in Paris where people don't really speak English. He gave us a card for a company and we were going to ask for the taxi to pick us up where we were. The problem was that we didn't exactly know where that was. While Erin was on the phone trying to get a taxi, I went to a friendly looking woman to ask where we were. She told us that it was easier to take the bus (as well as the fact that the taxi was going to take up to 40 minutes to get to us). The bus was defintely the faster option. We took the 35 bus for one stop, got off, and walked to a 21 bus stop and just had to make sure that the bus was going in the right direction. Simple. Not so much - but the woman was so helpful and offered to walk with us to the right bus stop. I think it was our looks of confusion and utter desperation for help that convinced her to help us. That worked out really well. We were so thankful to her for her kindness.

The journey back home was somewhat less exciting. We were excited to be going home but we were so tired. There's only so much fun a person can take in one week. Our flight was delayed, again, but it was our flight to London which was kind of a problem. We had a connecting flight back to Cape Town and there was only a two hour stopover between the two flights. There was an hour delay. You can imagine how enthralled we were with this news. The airport people told us that if we did miss our flight back, they would have paid for another flight or our hotel. The hotel would have been an impossibility because our visa does not permit us to leave the airport.

 But, all this drama was avoided because our flight was only delayed by 30 minutes and we got to London with time to spare. It did cause a smidgen of hysteria for a brief period.

Some other interesting things that happened were getting stuck in a lift at the HardRock Cafe for 20 minutes or something. I was stressing. I'm not a fan of sharing very small spaces with three other people. The next night, we had just got back from supper and were on the phone to our mom and the electricity went out and an alarm went off. I'm a lot more dramatic than my sister, and I was picturing people attacking the hotel and stealing everything. Real James Bond situation in my mind. We couldn't see anything or talk to anybody because nobody spoke english. Turns out it was just a block-wide power failure. Much less intriguing, but still.
Paris was definitely an incredible life experience and I will never forget it!

Paris, here we come

I'm really excited to write this post!

I was asked a while ago to be a keynote speaker at the UNESCO/IIEP Conference in Paris. It's all about education and involving the youth in strategising to improve education globally.

I have my speech sorted....although it did take longer than expected. Here's the situation: I finished my speech and everything was cool and then I discovered that my computer decided that it's not important to save anymore, even though I totally clicked save and proceeded to eat my speech. So, after much stress and hysteria, my speech is done. Whew!

We are leaving just after 8 tonight and will arrive early tomorrow morning. Quick stopover in London (most stressful and expensive visa for a 7 hour stay we've ever had, by the way) and then PARIS!

Exciting times lie ahead. I'm positive that Erin and I will have plenty of stories of a lifetime to share when we get back.

Pictures and updates will follow.
See you on the other side.

:)

The beginning of the end...

I know I haven't written in a while...my bad. Things have been crazy and I haven't really had time to look sideways. I'm sorry you fell of my radar but you're back on :)

Since my last post so much has happened - I turned 18! WOOHOO!! So I am now legal. How legit? I couldn't celebrate my birthday in typical fashion because I was writing prelims and I wrote English on my birthday, Maths the next day and then History the day after that. History was on a Saturday. We were not happy chappies. It was a bad week.

However, we still went out. Not as bigscale as you would expect. We just went to Banana Jam and had a really rad time with like our family members and friends which worked out to 21 people. So, still pretty epic. The next day (when I was writing my maths paper) our grade head came to me and said "you really shouldn't be going out during exams". You can imagine my surprise. She then proceeded to say that if it was somebody's birthday celebration it was okay. "It was MY birthday!". Then she was chilled. It was really awkward for a while.

To celebrate properly we are having a party on Friday with all my homies. It's circus themed so we are busy making the house a circus. Not much of a stretch ;)

Prelims were a MAJOR thing that took over every second of my life for those three weeks and weeks before. Every time I was doing something to relax, I was thinking that I should have been studying and the amount of work I had to do.

Prelims are over now. Thank heavens. They were really average. But, you know, I'm looking at prelims as a trial run for finals. I messed up some things in prelims and I can learn from those things and not do them in finals and do much better.

That's my theory, anyway.

I'm on holiday now. Well, sort of. I don't have to go to school but I'm doing work at home. Preparing for finals. Fun times.

Some cool things that have happened recently are that I, along with our Lavender Hill Ambassadors, addressed the City of Cape Town Council meeting. It was really interesting to see how things work in those kinds of meetings. The best thing was that I couldn't get to the podium so I had to sit up at the top. I was given the seat where the Deputy Mayor of Cape Town sits. How cool is that? My topic was peace and inclusion and our four ambassadors spoke about their project on gangsterism. It was an amazing experience and when we were finished we got a standing ovation from the councillors.

The next big thing that's happening in my life is that I have been asked to be a keynote speaker at the UNESCO Conference in Paris in October. I'm so excited! I'm going with my sister. It's going to be EPIC! It's the first time I am travelling without my mom. It's an interesting time in our lives and it's the start of my claiming more of my independence.

We are leaving on the 13th of October and getting back on the 21st. It's going to be a crazy and amazing week that we will no doubt remember for the rest of our lives. Now we're just waiting for our visas and then we're all set.

Just because we live the crazy life that we do, four days after we get back from Paris I write my first final paper. It's enough time. I work best when I'm under pressure, anyway. I would have had my awesome experience before finals and then I can knuckle down and achieve what I want to in the end.

:)

Reunions and weird situations

Last week I went with my mom to East London. I was asked to speak at Mercedes Benz' Graduation of their learnership programme for people with disabilities.

It was a great experience. I met awesome people and had a really good time getting to know some of the people who were on the programme. I even got asked if I would 'consider' one of the graduants. That was interesting....

Going to the airport is always interesting as a disabled person. There are always challenges to overcome, but most of the time it's just hysterical.

I won a bet against my mom about where the Steers is, which was cool.

On this particular occassion, it was pretty normal with a little bit of weird.  When we went through the boarding gates, they searched me, which is normal practice but this time was different. First, I had to wait for them to search another person, a woman who was probably close to 90 years old and they asked her to stand up out of her wheelchair. It took a while....

Then it was my turn to be frisked. All in all, it was a really weird situation. She said hello and whatever, and then she asked me to go into this little room, which was not normal. So I went and they closed the door behind us. It felt very sketchy, actually. I think she was new on the job because she had a supervisor and she was very.....eager to do her job and, rubbed her hands together before she started.

Nothing dodgy happened, it was just a really weird experience.

After that, it was normal. We are kind of frequent flyers and we know every one of the PAU people. It's really cool. It's like a family reunion every time we go.

Bloemfontein...

Two weeks ago - I think - I went with my mom to see our Pay-it-forward Ambassadors in Bloemfontein and Kimberley.

Now, being the people we are, clearly there was drama and hysterical situations that we found ourselves in. It started at the airport, when we were 10 hours late for our flight...

haha.

So we had to book another flight. We made the last flight to Bloemfontein for the day. We made it by 10 minutes. EPIC stress session, right there.

After arriving in Bloem we were so hungry and decided that we would go to Debonairs. I know, this sounds like a really boring story that serves no purpose, but I promise, it gets entertaining round about now.

My mom went in to order. Average. It took ages, so she came out to see if I was still in the car and not being stolen. All was good. But....there was this man....he was the car guard. He used a really annoying whistling direction system, which would be effective if anybody knew what the different whistles mean. Keep in mind that I had been sitting in the car for 30 minutes, listening to this idiocy.

I was getting sufficiently frustrated with this man. Especially because I can't get out of the car to clear the earspace. He was having a good time though, so thumbs up to him for having fun at work. What made this situation a whole lot more ridiculous was the fact that he only had one properly functioning eye.

Now, for me, I don't put a whole lot of faith in a partially sighted car guard.

Something else I didn't understand was that he was wearing glasses...

He already has one eye that is covered (probably due to surgery or something), which means that he does not need glasses for that eye, which means that the eye that was assumably 'functioning properly' was, in fact, a lot less functional than initially predicted.

This made me have no faith in the abilities of this man to direct cars. I wasn't even sure if he could see them. I try hard not to judge but looking at that situation, I'm just saying...

The rest of the trip was quite normal. Except for the fact that we stayed with people that my mom last saw 25 years ago - that's a long time because I wasn't even alive then! So naturally we stayed up until the early hours of the morning. We had to catch up. Erica, Chris and Mariet were amazingly welcoming.

Our Ambassador groups are amazing! Yvette (our facilitator) does such an incredible job with these young people. Thank you, Yvette.

After the Ambassadors meetings had finished, we met Kendra, who is six years old, has cerebral palsy and goes to a mainstream school, and her family. They are moving down to Cape Town at the end of the year. I'm so ampd!

I went with Mariet and her friends to the movies. We watched 'Magic Mike'. I'm not sure what we were expecting to see in a movie about male strippers, but our expectations were too high. The only way to deal with the awkwardness of that movie was hysterical laughter. We were pretty good at that. I had fun, though, and now I have memories of that Bloemfontein trip that I will not forget. Even though some I would prefer to forget...

:)

Just a little bit busy

I know it's been a while since my last post. Okay, a long while, but life has been so busy I haven't really been able to update you guys. I'm sorry.. So, I'm writing now, in my room and its pretty much dark because of the kind of crappy weather we've been having lately. It doesn't inspire much creativity, but hey. Life goes on through the rainy days.

I honestly don't have a lot of exciting news. Quite sad actually. But.....I applied to university (not sure if I've told you but here's to reinforcement) and I handed in my results and other stuff they need and now we are waiting, somewhat patiently, for the verdict...

I also recently did by NBT. That was a mission in itself. I guess I should be used to it by now that being disabled often comes with hurdles, but I'm continuously surprised at how hard life can be. I'm going to put that down as 'positive thinking'. I registered, just as everybody else, and waited for my test day to arrive. Two days before, my mom phoned to ask about accessibility and stuff like that. And she was told that I can't write with everybody else because I need extra time.

Don't freak out.

I did. But in retrospect, it actually worked out better in the end, the way that it was organised. I wrote my test and now....we wait for the results. They say it takes two weeks to get them, so on Tuesday we will see.

The major thing that is on every matric pupil's mind - well, hopefully - is prelims. Oh my goodness, they are very soon and I don't know about everyone else but I am stressing. I have five weeks until they start and we are still getting work to finish. I'm really not sure where to fit it all in.

These 'holidays' have been crazy. Kind of like when people take the day off and end up doing work anyway. We have been given a lot of work and needed to finish it in the holidays. Mostly, projects that we were given a while ago. But I am very good at the whole procrastination thing. I realised a couple of days ago that I can't do it anymore. Result = stress!

I may be overplaying it a little bit, but it's fun :)

My plan is to study for exams from now so I can kick prelims' ass! We'll see how well that plan works out when life starts interrupting again...

:)

My speech in Chicago

I thought it would be cool if all of you could see what I said to all the cool people in Chicago. So, here it is:


I’d like to start by saying thank you for giving me this amazing award. It’s such an honour to be recognised for the work I’m doing with differently abled people in South Africa.


I was born in 1994 and in my country we are known as Madiba babies, as this was the year that Nelson Mandela became president of the new South Africa. It’s even more special for me to be getting this award from Mr F.W. De Klerk, who worked with President Mandela towards a more equal society. I am so grateful that I was born into a democracy. I do feel, though, that people with disabilities are still living in our own form of apartheid.

We are segregated from society not by choice but by a lack of accessibility and acceptance. These are issues that I, through The Chaeli Campaign, am working at getting more accessibility in all places as well as changing the attitudes of able-bodied people. It’s also important to educate people about the abilities of people living with disabilities. My main drive is for differently abled people to be included and accepted the way we are, because we cannot change our disability but we can change the way people see our disability.
I believe that we can do it. We can make disability just another trait instead of a reason for exclusion. We need to work together to make it happen. There’s a song by Nickelback that says “What’s worth the prize is always worth the fight” and I know that the prize of inclusion is definitely worth the fight.
Thank you.