Plight of the Disabled in Turkey

(Justin) I haven't been posting as much as I should about my work with Kifas. But one thing I do every day is check Twitter for tweets in Turkish about the disabled or wheelchairs. Every day there is a story that is RT'd to raise consciousness about the plight of the disabled. This weekend there were two stories of particular interest:

There was an examination (ÖMSS) for disabled people in order to get jobs as public servants. Over 60,000 people took the exam, but only about 3,000 will be chosen. However, the real scandal was that many of the government buildings where the test was given had multiple stories with no elevators or wheelchair ramps. The news showed people struggling up stairs, or being carried, or worse. The exam apparently allowed about one minute per question but several of the disabled couldn't write that fast.  The name of the exam is also offensive to some as the non-politically-correct word for "disabled" (özürlü) is in the title of the exam. It was nice to see the outrage about this on Twitter, at least.

In another story, what one reporter called a "tragic comedy," a walking bridge was built over a road in Trabzon in which one side has an easy-access ramp for wheelchairs and strollers while the other side of the bridge only has a set of steep stairs. The news showed people in wheelchairs being pushed across and carried down the stairs and parents struggling wıth theır strollers. One wonders how the engineers did not think about this.

Daily you read tweets of people in the subways who can't get up because the elevator is broken, etc. It's difficult here. One source of encouragement is the growing number of advocacy groups harnessing social media to unite around causes and network together. The government and a large number of local charities also show increasing concern.  But there is much work to be done.

Gençlik Parkı

We visited another major park in Ankara, called Gençlik Parkı (which literally means Youth Park). It's in the Ulus district downtown, which is pretty far from us - it took us about 45 minutes on the bus to get there. However, it was a lot of fun and definitely something special for us to do together! The park is huge with lots of playgrounds and green space and beautiful water pools.

There is an amusement park! We didn't go in because Elias wouldn't be able to ride many of the rides, but we might go back there this summer and see what we can get him on! There's a Viking Ship ride, which he LOVED watching swing back & forth!

Daddy & Elias on a bridge over the water. Directly to the left of Justin's head on the big hill in the background, that's the Ankara Castle. (Go here to read Justin's blog of when he visited it last summer. Elias & I haven't made it up there yet!)

We took along a picnic and enjoyed eating by the water!

This was one of many small playgrounds. Those clowns were all over the park, and they're trash cans!

There were lots of cute slides like this dinosaur and the fish below.

This was definitely the piece-de-resistance of the park: a HUGE covered playground! If it wasn't so far, I would take Elias here ALL. THE. TIME!

23 Nisan

The 23rd of April (23 Nisan in Turkish) is a national holiday in Turkey called The Holiday of National Sovereignty and Children. It's a really big deal, and Elias' school will be closed, so they celebrated today with a costume party! Elias was SO. EXCITED. this morning to be able to wear this Thomas costume we borrowed from some friends.

Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen?! I don't even have to ask, because I know he is. He's wearing two Thomas shirts and his Thomas socks to complete the ensemble!

But then when I picked him up from school, he looked like this!

Toting a Turkish flag and a sucker, and with face paint! I was shocked he let them paint his face, but he was totally excited about that too. Not that you can tell from this picture, but he was. (He was just more interested in consuming the sucker.)

Best as I can tell, he's a mouse. White ears over his eyes, red nose, and yellow/white whiskers. HE says it's a mouse!

So this will be our first big holiday in Turkey, and we're looking forward to seeing how they celebrate!

Ahlatibel Park with Friends

A couple weeks ago, Elias and I had a little excursion to one of the large parks with some American friends. We packed a picnic and played on the playgrounds - it was fun! As with most of the larger parks, it's a little too far to be worth it for us to try to get there on public transportation, but with a friend who drives, getting there was a cinch! She said we were a little early in the season so not all of the attractions were open. In the summer, this park will have pools, trampolines, and other fun things to play on too! We had a good time just at the big playground - we're not too hard to please.

Elias (in the red pants) with his buddy Eli. They go to the same preschool, although Eli is in the older class.

This was quite a large playground with several slides, tunnels, swings, merry-go-round, and see-saws. Elias' favorite is always the curly slide!

However, this one also had a two-story slide you had to climb up a ladder to get to, and Elias really dug that one. He's never been really confident on ladders, so he asked me to help him up the ladder for most of the time. But with my encouragement and help, he was climbing the ladder by himself like a pro by the end of our visit!

When we discovered that almost all the playgrounds here have a gravel base, we got Elias a little bucket and shovel to take to play with the rocks. He loves it! I've been pleased and surprised to see that a large number of other kids we see at the playgrounds also bring rock-playing gear. Boys love rocks!

Another of Elias' favorite things at any playground is the merry-go-round, and this one was special because it was more like a carousel with animals to ride on. Elias. Loved. It!

The playground also had this gigantic swing that the kiddos liked.

Then on the way home to celebrate our fun time together, we stopped and got ice cream. Seeing the boys enjoy their chocolate ice cream in pure boy fashion, we decided we had a new rule for life: You know it's been a good day when you have chocolate up your nose. :)

Eli's little brother, Noah, isn't quite 2. He isn't in the other pics because he can't keep up with the bigger boys... Yet!

Thankful for friends, beautiful weather, and fun adventures!

The Biggest Loser, Twitter, and Cultural Insights

(Justin) One of Joni's favorite shows in the U.S. was The Biggest Loser, and we watched the first couple seasons together. The show is brand new here in Turkey, it's a 30 minute show that comes on every night on Star TV. In Turkish, it's called A New Life. It's become our favorite show.

The setup of the show, music, drama, etc. are identical to the U.S. version. (One odd difference is they filmed it in the winter and it appears many of the buildings aren't heated, so the contestants are often working out while wearing heavy parkas.)  The show is on Week 3, I think.

As in America, I like to find people's comments on Twitter while I watch a show as it's like watching a show with a bunch of friends (who you don't have to clean up after) and it's great for language learning. Judging from Twitter, the show does not appear to be gaining the popularity here that it has in the U.S., at least among the young people who predominately tweet. There are few tweets and I find the majority are negative-- "Can you believe how weak these people are?" "Is this a cruel joke?" "This show is too American," etc.

You don't see many obese people in Turkey (I think most people in the U.S. know it's predominately an American problem), particularly among the young so I suspect there is an element of shame involved here that may be different than in the U.S.

Tonight the show had a good cultural insight as it highlighted how much Turks love children. Elias often gets doted on and given plenty of free stuff (namely candy) in stores. Tonight the physical challenge was a 100 meter dash with 2 contestants pairing off but also having to run against one random child (grades 1-6). When they brought out the children the contestants about melted, and one of them commented that the kids were so sweet that it was hard to think about competing. One of the women claimed she quit running because she was so struck by the child's charisma ("karizma," a new Turkish word). At the end, the contestants who lost seemed just to be happy to have seen the kids-- and these were just random kids, not their own. It struck us as bizarre.

Jeopardy! is finally making its way to Turkey soon and I look forward to watching it, I think I'll learn quite a bit of knowledge from it but I wonder if Turks will enjoy the question novelty.  I'm not sure if other reality TV shows exist on Turkish broadcast (read: free) television but there definitely aren't as many as in the U.S. I wonder why that is (and also consider this to be an advantage for Turkey :-) )?

The Hills Are Alive

One really new thing for us about the city of Ankara is that it is SO hilly. And the hills are tall and steep! I've never lived in a place like this before! It's like somebody just plopped a gigantic city on top of a mountain range. There is very little grading or leveling - the city just follows the natural inclines of the landscape. And as the city expands, they just keep building up and down the next mountain! So everywhere we go, it's either uphill or downhill (usually both: up & down & up & down...). I don't think I've seen any level streets. Anywhere. That certainly makes it good exercise for us, since we walk most places! It's also interesting taking city buses up and down those steep inclines and zig-zagging the tight corners! Definitely a new experience for me! Below you'll find a few photos of what I'm talking about. Click the images to enlarge.

View from our kitchen window. You can see the hills stretching out in the background. I took these a couple weeks ago when there was still snow covering the rooftops.

A zoomed-in view out the kitchen window. You can really see how the city is just sprawling its way up the mountain!

Amazing view from behind Elias' school. The mountains are still snow-covered even though it has all melted in the city!

This was taken out the window of a taxi as we drove over a bridge. Another good example of how the city just follows the hills!

From the same taxi. In this spot, the road was dug out of the mountain, but the sides were reinforced. Those are huge apartment buildings sitting at the top of those embankments!

This one you definitely need to enlarge to see. We are at the top of a hill in the city. The road in front of us goes sharply down, but you can see the city continuing on and on into the distance over the hills.

We were riding in a bus today that took an amazing route through a deep valley! I couldn't get my camera out fast enough to capture the view, but hopefully another time. There are some spectacular scenes to be glimpsed at the top of every hill and around every corner! Ankara sure is a wonder!

A Proper Fit

(Justin) This week I visited Friends of Kardelen, a care ministry to Turkish families, particularly those with disabilities or other special needs. The director is Norita Erickson, wife of Kifas' owner Ken Erickson. Some children were there with some severe challenges-- spina bifida, cerebral palsy, scoliosis, etc. They were in wheelchairs that were not helping their bodies develop properly.  Another organization had donated some money to buy chairs for needy kids and I was there with Ken and an American physical therapist to examine the children, get their sizes, and see if a Kifas chair could work better for them. 

(This is a stock photo, not taken at the event described in this post.)

The Xplore Mobility chairs that Kifas is working on producing here are designed specifically for these types of kids. They position the child so that their body functions better, so that they can move and relax, and are adjustable as they grow larger. 

It was heartbreaking to see kids who had certain aggravated handicaps due to ignorance or lack of proper treatment. Groups like Friends of Kardelen work to educate parents about therapy and early intervention.  It was encouraging to see that Kifas' products can help the children and encourage their parents. We hope to do more events like this in the future. 

Check out Norita Erickson's blog here for more on her 30 years of work in Turkey.  Are you a physical therapist who might like to for a short-term trip to help work with these types of children?  If so, please contact us.