Paralympians dont need your pity, just respect

Paralympian Francis Karanja and guide [Photo: Light for the World]

By Gabriel Mueller

It’s a pleasantly hazy kind of light that fills the small hours of the day in the narrow streets of the centre of London. Red double-decker busses carefully drive around the narrow curves.

Men and women in pink reflective safety vests seem to populate the streets, one at every corner, ready to point in the right direction all those trying to navigate the streets of London in search of the city’s current hotspot: Stratford International, where the sold-out Olympic stadium holds 80,000 people.

These 80,000, all ready and willing to accompany disabled athletes from all over the world to new records and personal bests by cheering, hooting and applauding across all sectors.

On the way to the stadium the front pages of all newspapers are filled with the most spectacular images of the Paralympic Games. Indeed, the front pages.

It seems that the 14^th summer Paralympic Games for the first time in history achieved what up to this point only ever seemed like a far-flung dream: full recognition of the top performances commensurate to their physical pre-conditions of the 4,280 athletes with disabilities. Not merciful, clement appraisal of moving scenes in singular disciplines, not just short messages about the odd medal, neatly tucked away at the backs of newspapers or used as fillers at unpopular transmission times.

The fact that thousands of spectators on the bleachers pull out their hankies simultaneously when the blind Brazilian sprinter Terezinha Guilhermina excitedly jumps up on her rangy guide runner after her victory over 100 metres, again and again, and when she pulls her colourful eye mask over his eyes, as if she was trying to say: “I can see – at this very moment – thousands of clapping hands let me feel, let me see how beautiful this world is, and for now you will have to wear my mask, you will have to feel my blindness!” – this fact describes much more than anything else the personal stories behind such moments in the limelight.

Many congenital disabilities like dysmelia or hemiparesis aside, a large number of athletes at the Paralympics are marked and formed by severe accidents and illnesses, many of which catapulted them straight out of an up to that point fairly linear course of life.

Francis Thuo Karanja from Kenya is blind, a childhood malaria infection has robbed him of his eyesight. He has found his way to becoming one of the fastest blind runners in the world taken by the hand by his brother James.

Francis gave his all to make his country proud on the celebrated track of the London stadium over the distance of 5,000 metres. Even with the 4^th place in the personal best time of 15:56 he is happy after the long way he had to go to be in the limelight.

Today Francis is a role model for so many blind people in Kenya, where hunger is omnipresent in many places and disabled children are more often than not hidden away out of shame.

The European NGO “Light for the world” deliberately uses sports as a rehabilitation method and as a tool to foster the inclusion of people with disabilities in many projects in developing countries.

19-year-old runner Pita Rondao Bulande emerged from such a project. In London, he was the first competitor from Mozambique in the history of the Paralympic Games.

In 2016 in Brazil many more of his fellow countrymen should already be able to get a chance to step into the global limelight as shining examples and ambassadors for people with disabilities.

A gold medal remains the sportive dream and the personal goal of all participants at the Paralympic Games. But what they all want, every top athlete in a wheelchair, on crutches or guided along by someone else, what everyone wants here at the Paralympics as well as in life in general, is one thing above everything else: A lot of zest, not charity.

London has raised the bar and left the world in awe.

Gabriel Müller is the Director international alliances for Light for the World. He is based in the UK. [email protected]