Stories from the Edge - Volunteer Now

“I love people seeing me as aperson who achieves”When Angela Hendra turned up at a cub scout campsite to teach archery, the youngsters lookedaghast. Initially she assumed it was her wheelchair and the fact that she was not able bodied. Butthe cubs were expecting a man, after all Robin Hood was of the masculine gender even if he didwear tights.The youngsters on the weekend camping trip soon forgot the gender classification problem when they saw how she could pullAngela Hendraback the bowstring sending an arrow flying into the heart of a target. Angela’s disability was accepted by the young cub scoutswho recognised another human being and not some sort of second class citizen in a chair on wheels. The youngsters saw theperson or the soul which is perhaps more important than appearance. Angela was someone who happened to be a wheelchairuser who was damned good with a bow and arrow. Angela’s inner self or character is the ultimate source of her happiness andtrue success.In many ways Angela Hendra is typical of the new stoical outlook in the early days of this third millennium. She recognises whatshe has control over and what she has no control over. She struggled to bring those uncontrollable things such as, no disabledtoilets, lack of access to buildings, outrageous taxi surcharges and many other discriminatory facts of life into her arena of clout.She realises also that there is a need to free herself and other disabled folk from false schemes of life. False life schemes havedogged Angela Hendra all her life.As a young person, the only girl in the small family of three children, growing up in remote windswept Malin Head in CountyDonegal, she began to have difficulty in walking. Then at just 12 years of age it was found that a benign growth had paralysedher from her waist down. Yet Angela’s life was already being laid out for her by her mother who ominously albeit innocentlysaid, ‘When they are all away there will just be you and me Angela’.Although it is now a vanished ideology, at one time to have a serious disability was seen as some sort of punishment from God.To be disabled was an affliction, which needed to be cured. To be cured presupposes that a disabled person is ill but as Angelapoints out she has good health. She insists it is the medical model that seeks to categorise her condition and compare it withthe ideal. She might be disabled but she is certainly not ill. However, people are alienated by physically disability. It is the basisof discrimination. Angela is quick to point out that her civil rights were violated and continue to be violated.