Life with Cerebral Palsy and... with passion.

One afternoon in May I came across an e-mail from Olesia Kornienko telling about the circumstances under which she’d finished her studies of journalism, her and her mother’s problems regarding life, apartment and health.

 

As for my studies, I haven’t managed to finish them. My health deteriorated and I’m not able to write on an exam as much as it’s required. I wrote lots of letters to the dean, the rector and the department’s administration proposing a test composed of closed questions. Nothing helps. They gave me 50% or 80% more time to write an exam, but I couldn’t make it anyway./.../

I also asked the Bureau for Students with Disabilities to provide me with an assistant who would help me prepare for the exams, a couple of weeks later they sent me a negative reply. I wanted to suspend the studies for a year and, as a result, my name was removed from the list of students - wrote Olesia.

And then the decision – we are leaving for Canada, an unknown place, with no language skills, maybe it will be possible to finish the studies there and to improve the living conditions...

Olesia enclosed an invitation to her evening which was to be held in June at the gallery of the Association of the Polish Graphic Artists in Warsaw, Mazowiecka St., a goodbye evening, a farewell to Poland. She stressed that the editorial team of „Nasze Sprawy" was very important for her, as she’d made her debut as a journalist in this magazine, and asked me to participate in her goodbye evening.

 

The first contact

 

Stanisław Duszyński, the deceased founder and president of the Spirit Foundation (Fundacja Ducha) for the Rehabilitation of People with Disabilities in Toruń, was the one who first told us about Olesia. In 2001 we met her in person during a rock climbing camp organized by the Foundation. It’s a young woman suffering from severe and irreversible effects of cerebral palsy, which forced her to use a wheelchair, gagged her mouth, distorted her body due to convulsive, painful spasms – uncontrolled tension of the muscles of the upper body, imprisoning a sensitive being with an indomitable spirit.

 

Before we met her, we’d read the first text sent by Olesia and considered ourselves as winners – we’d managed to go through a jungle of fuzzy fonts (she used an old, deteriorated typing machine) and errors, as the Polish language wasn’t her strongest point at that time.

Normally such a text would have been thrown away, but we admired the author’s determination, we were also captured by some great remarks, fresh expressions, accuracy of the comparisons. The decision was quick – we print.

Of course, first we had to do some tedious editorial work and proofreading.

The effect passed our expectations. And it’s been this way ever since – our recognition for Olesia has been growing with each article sent by her. After some time her texts didn’t need anymore editorial treatment or proofreading.

 

Poland: a country of great possibilities and expectations

Olesia is Russian, she was born in 1975, spent her childhood travelling in the former Soviet Union with herm in search of effective treatment and rehabilitation methods. As she says, she was a difficult case for Russian doctors. She dictated her first poem when she was 5, at that age she also started to draw with color pencils.

She came to Poland for the first time in 1988 and at that time it was a country of great possibilities and expectations for her. Since 1992 she’s been living in Poland with her mom, she finished secondary school here, in 2005 she received Polish citizenship.

Here she met people who influenced the development of her personality and passions and, what is more important for her, thanks to Poland she came to know about God. Her meeting with Reverend Krzysztof Małachowski, with the Foundation „Children for Children” („Dzieci Dzieciom"), where she lived with her mom for two years, the atmosphere of this place full of love – all that made her and her mom decide to be baptized.

Here she started to develop her creative potential: do journalism, write poems and short stories, practice wheelchair dancing and rock climbing, use computer software for graphics, here she started to study her dreamed journalism at Warsaw University.

She was awarded numerous awards in Polish literature and journalism contests, since 2009 she’s been a member of the Association of Polish Writers.

All these activities were presented during the goodbye evening – through the memories of the people who, according to Olesia, played an important role in her life and in the form of large charts which presented her graphic works along with lines of her poems.

 

Your attitude has changed me as well...

On June 18 I drove through the dug up Warsaw to get to Mazowiecka St., where it wasn’t easy to find a parking space. Entering the ZPAP gallery one was struck by these huge charts – hybrids of graphics and literature. The gallery was getting filled with public and the event was starting.

Its scenario had been carefully prepared by Anna Sobol, she was the one who animated the evening, lending her voice to Olesia. She also recited Olesia’s poems with the accompaniment of Marzena Korzycka (cello) and Wiesław Koczywąs (guitar).

Anna Sobol thanked the president of the Warsaw ZPAP Jacek Maślankiewicz and the employees of the Association for their enthusiasm for the idea of organizing this event in the ZPAP gallery and for financing the charts with Olesia’s works. The charts were the subject of an impromptu auction at the end of the evening.

Jacek Maślankiewicz said that for him the idea of organizing the evening there had seemed an obvious and natural thing. The event’s protagonist was Olesia whose passion and unusual will had made it happen. He added that it was also an occasion for people with disabilities to meet with able-bodied people, these differencing having no importance in the face of art, and that the ZPAP gallery would continue to organize this kind of meetings of people from different environments with art.

Iwona Ciok, president of the Association for Rehabilitation and Integration Dance of Disabled People Swing-Duet, in the colors of which the protagonist of the evening won several medals in dance in wheelchairs, among others the silver medal in the World Cup in Holland, said these significant words about Olesia:

When someone tells me that something is impossible, I don’t believe it anymore. I have a proof - you. I realized quickly what you were capable of and your attitude has changed me as well...

 

Jolanta Żydołowicz, director of the Spirit Foundation, spoke with recognition and warmth of Olesia’s adventure with rock climbing, which had started in 2000. She stressed her courage and readiness for any sacrifice, emphasizing that Olesia never gave up and was very active in other areas – during the camps she organized poetry evenings and graphic shows in fresh air, she gave salsa lessons.

All these areas of Olesia’s interests and activities were reflected in her texts, very interesting, fresh and characterized by personal emotionality, published for years in „Nasze Sprawy”, which reminded the below signed person.

 

 

Olesia writes in light colors

 

Olesia’s silhouette was drawn in a very warm way by Marek Miller, who conducts classes of press reportage in the Laboratory of Reportage at the Department of Journalism at Warsaw University. I quote extracts of his speech in extenso, as it would be difficult to summarize it.

- The laboratory I conduct is a place for experiments and journalistic queries.

We operate in three areas - we are trying to penetrate the space between journalism and writing, screenplay and drama. In film schools students aren’t taught social contact and interview, on the other side journalists aren’t taught drama and dialogue writing. We create multimedia stories, i.e. we tell one story using several media: we produce a broadcast, a theatre play, a book about the same subject. One of the activities is group work on a text – e.g. we’ve been going to Auschwitz for 10 years and creating a chronicle of that place using 3,500 documents, written by both prisoners and executioners.

And Olesia’s mom comes to this laboratory, tells about her daughter who wants to study here. I got scared, I hadn’t had this kind of experience before. But I said to myself it was a challenge, especially if you announce that you conduct experiments, you have to pay for your words. If Olesia isn’t supposed to study here, where is she supposed to study? There’s no proper place for her at the university. I was afraid she would “break” my classes, because the students would pay more attention to her than to what I’d be saying.

Reading the notes she was taking during the classes I discovered phrases proving her deep understanding, focus on the subject and – what’s more –creative phrases!

Then Olesia wrote reportages – about rock climbing, dance competitions. And again it was a surprise, because the author of those texts couldn’t be considered as a disabled person! These texts were very well written, with a great deal of information and great emotionality.

It was a light emotionality, while most people are characterized by darkness. People write in dark colors. There aren’t many who write in light colors, such a person was for sure Reverend Jan Twardowski, our patron - Ryszard

Kapuściński, Reverend Józef Tischner.

And I think that Olesia also writes in light colors – whether she writes poems or reportages, there’s a mark of reality, its artistic transformation – with no concessionary fare. These reportages are great if you consider the author’s young age.

What am I trying to say? A solitary man is not free, freedom is possible only in contact with another person. The concept of closeness, which escapes somewhere in our everyday life. There are people, among them Olesia, who know that what really counts in life is closeness.

Reverend Twardowski asked me once: - Do you know what people confess when they are old? That nobody loves them.

“I’m not important, neither are you, what’s important is what flow between us" – I try to make my students understand this principle. I think that Olesia is very close to something on which most of us will have to keep working for a long time. Now they are leaving. I’m proud of the fact that they were here for a while, that Poland was for them a more prospective place than the one they’d come from. And that’s all right, because everyone has the right to look for their place.

I wish things would go even better for them in the new place.

 

Farewell

 

In „Nasze Sprawy" of February 2002 r. in the article „My adventure with rock climbing" Olesia wrote these significant words: “Mountains and climbing are elements I’ve also experienced. Every day of climbing meant for me new hits against the rocks, bruises, lack of strength and total tiredness in the evening, but also new experiences every day, overcoming my weaknesses and fulfilling my dreams of freedom".

And that’s Olesia: ambitious, intelligent and courageous, unwilling to accept the dysfunctions that limit her. She keeps taking up new challenges and ways of expressing herself.

I understand that her departure for Canada is a new challenge. I’m deeply convinced that the chain around her silhouette on the poster will break under the pressure of her strength and will!

That’s what I wish to you, Olesia, and to your mom on behalf of our editorial team.

We wish you good health above all, I’m sure that you will take care of the rest.

Write to us – don’t let us forget you... Let the words from your poem:

 

A dance at the edge which lasts only for a moment...

Balancing over the abyss I see another dimension.

With no fear towards the sky

- be your signpost.

 

Ryszard Rzebko

14.07.2011

 

The original Polish text here http://naszesprawy.eu/kultura-i-sztuka/5946-olesia-opuszcza-polsk.html