Just a Slide

It just looked like a slide. It was just 15-feet tall and inflatable. Slide on the left hand side, a rope ladder on the right. It looked like something that you’d see in any American child’s yard at their birthday party. But here it’s something that these people have never seen before. Going down a slide? Never even dreamed about, probably. Yet here it was – an inflatable slide sitting in the middle of our soccer field.

This year at camp, the Ukrainian staff has made it a top priority to give these campers experiences that they’ve never had before. In Ukraine, if you’re in a wheelchair or mentally disabled, going to a park is probably out of the question. If you do happen to visit a park, you certainly won’t find anyone who’d push you on a swing, or help you climb the slide. If you’re disabled in Ukraine, these things don’t exist. Until this week.

Here they were. Nearly 60 campers staring at these contraptions wondering, was this for them? People in wheelchairs wondering, if this is for me, there’s no way I can climb a ladder held together by the knots in a rope. They would probably have been satisfied sitting and watching the “healthier” campers have their fun. That’s how these people are over here. But this was for everyone. Even people in wheelchairs and walkers. Even the people who don’t have the ability to use their arms or legs at all.

One-by-one a line started to form for the slide. Camper after camper. Some campers joined the line with their American friends, some wanted to venture alone.

There’s no way these people can do this, we thought. There’s no way we can ask a disabled person to not only climb a ladder, but to do it on an inflatable and shaky surface. Someone’s going to fall. Someone’s going to get hurt. Little do we know.

As the line started to form, staff members started helping people up the ladder. One staff member stood atop the slide to lend a hand and pull the campers up who were making the climb. One or two staff stood behind each camper to make sure they didn’t fall backwards. For about 20 minutes, these people lit the entire place on fire with their smiles. Then came Andre.

Andre is in a wheelchair. He’s not paralyzed, but he’s severely disabled. He can’t use his arms or his legs to do much. He can’t speak. From time-to-time he can push his wheelchair backwards and forwards by dragging or pushing his feet onto the ground. But he won’t go far. He wanted to go down the slide.

Again, there’s no way. Who’s going to be the one to tell Andre he can’t do it? No one. These people are amazing. Two Ukrainian staff picked him up out of his wheelchair and carried him to the base of the slide. Then they lifted him – two people above him and one person below, and they began to climb the rickety ladder with Andre in their arms. It took about a minute to climb the ladder, and at times it looked like they were dragging and scraping his back on the rungs, but you wouldn’t know it by Andre’s gigantic smile. HE WAS REALLY DOING THIS! Then once he was on top (which probably seemed like the world to him), he was gently pushed down the slide. The people helping him back into his wheelchair at the bottom could only hear his laughter.

Then a few more campers went up and then down the slide – all of them carried by staff members.

Maxim, the physical therapist on-staff at MTU, asked if the American men would mind switching places to give the Ukrainian staff a break. Sanchez, Jon, Alex, Kerry and Tyler all took different positions on the slide. Sanchez was up top to help pull campers up and to encourage the scared campers to go down the slide. The other 4 carried every camper. One-by-one. It was an honor.

Sometimes things happen in life that we’ll never forget. And then sometimes things happen in life that get placed into the top-five most important and inspiring things we’ll ever do. This was both. To carry a person on your shoulders or in your arms who’s spent their entire lives either sitting in their wheelchair or lying in their bed, up a ladder and then giving them the rush of going down a slide for the first time in their lives and seeing the world light up from their smiles qualifies as one of the greatest things any of us could give to another person. To help them feel joy. To help them feel safe even though what we were climbing wasn’t anything that could pass as completely safe. To help them feel adventurous and exhilaration. We carried them to something they’ve never done before. It didn’t matter how heavy they were, it didn’t matter how stiff their bodies were. It didn’t matter if our feet slipped through the rungs or if we felt we couldn’t keep climbing – we weren’t dropping them. If pride was a pot of water, it’d be boiling and spilling over. I’ve never been more proud of our team.We’ll never forget those minutes, those steps, those stumbles, those smiles. Neither will these campers. For nearly 60 disabled people in Ukraine, it may have resembled a slide, but it was immeasurably more.