Reflection 38 – Those Unfortunate Amongst Us

I have recently moved back to live in Irvine, CA in order to participate in a UCI clinical trial for ALS. I used to live there until 2014 when I was pursuing my PhD . I meet up with a dear friend of mine, who also used to live in Irvine the same time I was living there and is now living in northern California. He is a pretty shrewd engineer, who has spent a decent amount of his adult life living in California. We have an interesting conversation about my future plans after the clinical trial and whether I should remain in the US afterwards or return back to Egypt. Being an engineer himself, he explains to me about building codes adopted in California and how they take into account every bit of detail making the lives of people with certain disabilities livable. On the other hand, these codes simply do not exist in Egypt which will eventually make my life quite difficult. But in Egypt, I have social support that I don’t have in the US. This dilemma would always remain with me.
Sometime in 2019 also
I am fortunate enough to live in a very nice house in an amazing neighborhood in Irvine. The area is filled with greenery and nice hiking trails, which in turn allow me to use my electric scooter to go around and enjoy my life. It really strikes me to see a decent number of people enjoying their lives and practicing their life normally despite their physical disabilities. I could see them in those hiking trails, supermarkets, parks, and so on. Given my own physical limitations, I‘m very sensitive to similar cases like myself. At some point in time, it feels as if EVERYONE around me has some sort of disability (you know for example if you are interested in buying a certain brand of cars, you begin to notice it everywhere until it feels that everyone other than you already owns that car). I start saying to myself: WOW! All those people with disabilities. Then, I flashback to Egypt and think naively that at least in Egypt we don‘t have this high number of people with disabilities! Think about the last time you saw an old man or woman shopping in a supermarket on their scooter. NEVER, right? Accordingly, we must be at an advantage back in Egypt. At least one time, we are more superior to our US counterpart. Of course, I am kidding!
So, what is going on?!
Basically in Egypt I would say we have hundreds of thousands of people if not millions with disabilities. We don‘t see them that much because the country unfortunately is not designed in a way that accommodates this type of people. In other words, we don‘t see them SIMPLY because they can‘t engage in life like regular people. I sometimes try to imagine a poor family living in a mediocre building with no elevator with one family member on a wheelchair. How do they go out? What do they do in case of an emergency? Can this family ever enjoy an outing together? This is just one example and of course there are thousands others. Even some of the lavish gated communities built recently in Cairo lack some of the basic building codes catering to everyone. I don‘t know for a fact, but I highly doubt the existence of building codes requiring real estate developers to adopt certain codes. I dream of a day where it is mandatory for any construction project being executed to abide by specific building codes. We need to stop this terrible stereotype that sidelines thousands if not millions of citizens because of their physical disabilities. At the other extreme, we should capitalize on
those people that typically possess some amazing mental capabilities and learn how to fully integrate them in our communities.