Author Topic: A Wheelchair Dancer Lives Up Her Dream  (Read 3790 times)

tonybau

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A Wheelchair Dancer Lives Up Her Dream
« on: August 21, 2014, 11:46:49 PM »
A Wheelchair Dancer Lives Up Her Dream
By Tonybau

Lin Hsiu Hsia discovered her life and herself in dance. We called her Sophie. She joined us at a lunch stop on our way to Mt. Kinabalu in Borneo. She was of average height for an Asian, be-spectacled, ambled with her crutches, and beamed as she was introduced. She had just planed in from Taiwan.

The polio virus ravaged her when she was a year old, leaving a short leg and a lifetime limp. Depression marked her early years.  “Why me?”, she asked. She underwent leg lengthening surgery but this failed. She became resigned to her crutches. Later, she started using a wheelchair as an alternative.

Once she was exposed to a group of polio victims having fun in wheelchairs. It dawned on her that life was to be lived.  She now asked, “Why not?” and joined the fun. Her attitude towards life shifted from negative to positive as she discovered what she could do with her body even with the deformity. She fell in love with and was transformed by wheelchair dancing and went on to excel in it. She learned to scuba dive and sky dive. She became an inspirational speaker, as well.
MT. KINABALU STOCK PHOTO

She heard of the climb to Mt. Kinabalu, contacted Fat Yap Lam, then President of the Rotary Club of Bukit Bintang, Malaysia, 2012-2013, who spearheaded the project known as Mission 70: Bridging the Divide, a 3-year mentoring project for poor but deserving, and able-bodied Malaysian teens. A classroom in the sky was part of the climb. Sophie was denied several times. The climb was no ordinary climb. She pestered President Yap with emails until he relented. That may have been among the reasons she was beaming when she joined us. None of us had any idea why. I thought she was just happy she caught up with us.

A bus ride from the city of Kota Kinabalu by the sea brought us partly up the Chinese Widow, that formidable mountain of granite whose peak I had taken pictures of from the plane, for an overnight stay at a hotel. The next day was the first part of the climb. From Timpohon gate, the only phase downhill was the first part to Carson Falls about 100 meters away. The rest was uphill to the rest house, Laban Rata, 3,270 meters high and 4-5 hours trekking, depending on one’s condition. Sophie trailed the rest of the team, inching her way up the steep, rocky trail with local guides and new-found friends to assist her. When she entered the inn hours later, tired and hungry, we greeted her with a loud applause. A warm dinner awaited her.

I purposely joined her after supper to get to know her, maybe write a story. The wind howled outside, rain pelted the roof and the windows, the cold seeping in to our bones. It felt like we were in the eye of a storm, up on a mountain.  Singaporean climber, Koo Swee Chow, 2-time Mt. Everest veteran, patiently interpreted for me. I learned of her story. She became an inspiration and a friend.

This climb was a dream she had kept to herself. There was no lack of naysayers—friends, family, fellow wheelchair dancers—but she held on to it.

Early peak day morning was dry, sunny, windy—a stark contrast to the night before. A good omen. Headache and nausea, early signs of mountain sickness, kept breakfast away for many in the team. We started off in single file. Doubts of reaching the peak crept in. Sophie followed on her own when she could, only allowing the porters to help her when she struggled. “If she can do it, I can do it,” I told myself many times. We all struggled with the thinning air.

Periods of rest came more often as we went on. We used these times as photo opportunities up this magnificent mountain.

Ahead of me, several of the kids reached the peak, savoring the moment, preserving it with their phone cams or bulky cameras. I had my moment, too, both in mind and in photos, even as hypoglycemia or low blood sugar reminded me to reach for an energy gel, the only one I had.

Inch by inch, weary from the struggle, Sophie temporarily stopped to sign her name on a climb logbook that served as evidence that one had reached the peak. I grabbed the opportunity to document this achievement and went back up to shoot the moment. She reached the top, 4,095.2 meters above sea level, long after the rest had done so. The scorching sun and cold gusts of wind were relegated to the back burner. Pain, relief, happiness and victory melded into one as Ong Hok Siew, climb leader and 65 times Mt. Kinabalu climb veteran, embraced her, keeping true to his promise that he would see everyone, all 70 plus of us, who would reach the top.

This wheelchair dancer had lived her dream.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2018, 02:25:00 AM by Joe Carillo »