NI NENGAH WIDIASIH

Lifting the nation’s reputation        

                       

The prognosis was grim. Nengah Widiasih, a four-year old in the isolated Balinese village of Karangasem, was so badly crippled she could only crawl. 

That was 1998.  She was a victim of polio.  She seemed doomed to live out a short life in penury and pain, illiterate, unemployable, a burden on her family, getting no government help.

This year she was the only woman representing Indonesia at the 20^th Paralympics in London. Next year she plans to enter university.

Her extraordinary turnaround is the result of determination – her own and those of assertive advocates for the disabled working outside government.

So far Nengah has won medals in China, Thailand and Malaysia. At the 2011 ASEAN ParaGames she collected gold, lifting 87 kilograms. In four years time she hopes to be at the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.  

Nengah competes in the 40-kilogram class, meaning she has to clock in under that weight and be as ruthless about her diet as any fashion model.

Powerlifting looks like a Star Chamber procedure for persuading sinners to recant. Athletes lie on their backs under a rack holding a horizontal bar.  Weights are added at each end; the bar has to be raised with arms fully extended. It’s a lone sport competing against a number. The preparation is psychological and physical.

Competing as a disabled athlete is no soft option. According to Paralympics International “winning is determined by skill, fitness, power, endurance, tactical ability and mental focus.”

 Despite her impressive achievements no business has offered sponsorship. While other athletes train in gear blossoming with the logos of local and multinational companies Nengah wears a simple red and white top emblazoned with one word – Indonesia.

“Paralympians don’t attract the same attention as other athletes,” she said.  “It shouldn’t be so. Nobody asks to be disabled. We train just as hard to achieve excellence on top of having a handicap.”

Indonesia doesn’t take the Paralympics seriously. Only four athletes (and 11 officials) went to London. This was the first year a team returned with a medal, David Jacobs’ bronze in table tennis.  The other contestants were swimmer Agus Ngaimin and long jumper Setiyo Budi Hartono.

Singapore, with just two per cent of the Archipelago’s population, sent eight athletes, Malaysia 23.

While the athletes were training in Solo, Indonesian Olympic Committee chairwoman Rita Subowo was reported as saying the small number was due to “a lack of preparation and poor facilities.

“In the future we must improve training facilities,” she said. “We must change our vision and make Olympics and Paralympics our highest targets.”

Nengah believes she contracted polio when a doctor used a dirty syringe, though the highly infectious disease is usually transmitted through contaminated food. 

Also known as infantile paralysis, polio was once a major threat to young children, particularly those in the tropics and poverty.  However aggressive international immunisation programs have almost eliminated the disease.

The last big outbreak in Indonesia was in 2005 when more than 200 children were paralysed. 

Nengah wasn’t the only member of her family stricken.  Her older brother Gede Suartaha was also infected.  The karmic view prevailed - that the commission of sins had caused the family’s distress.

The crippled kids were kept out of sight and school.  Their lives lurched into a new orbit only when discovered by Latra Nengah, working for the Yakkum rehabilitation center in Yogya, on a quest to winkle out the handicapped for help.

At first Nengah’s stonemason father refused fearing his daughter might disappear. Eventually he yielded for Latra had credibility and a silver tongue. Originally from the Balinese backblocks he’d been burned in an accident, treated by Yakkum and returned.  Later he started a rehab centre in Bali.

Nengah bussed to Yogya, got callipers, had an operation to help correct her twisted leg and spent two months in hospital.  After physiotherapy and so many injections she can no longer bear another needle she returned home upright, started school and took up powerlifting, a sport her brother had also entered.

She uses equipment supplied by Paralympics Indonesia and stored at the Yayasan Pembinaan Anak Cacat (Institute for the handicapped) where she boards and trains four times a week.

On a recent trip to New Zealand funded by Kiwi philanthropist Dr Gareth Morgan she saw world class facilities for the disabled, including purpose-built classrooms, special sports grounds and horse riding for the disabled.

Four wheel electric scooters, widely used by the disabled, also attracted.  However heavy traffic and potholed roads in Bali would make their use impractical, she said.

“We have laws in Indonesia ensuring wheelchair access to public buildings, but they don’t seem to get implemented,” she said.  “”My school has two stories and no lift.”

Nengah can walk for about 300 meters on level ground using a single crutch, but getting up stairs is difficult.  She strives to be independent, resisting help even when she takes a tumble.

Her overseas tours and successes have given her status and responsibility.  “I know that I’ve now become someone others look up to, and that means having to speak in public” she said. 

“People keep asking me questions.  They hear what I say but can never experience what I feel. So I prefer telling about myself through Facebook, communicating with everyone.”

Her entries include passionate poems like the following:

Mother, your noble teachings have settled my life.

My surroundings have changed, I have seen so much.

Sometimes I get washed away,

Sometimes I stand straight to challenge its heavy flow.

“If you have a dream you must work hard to achieve it,” she said. “I want all handicapped people to have the opportunities that I’ve had, and to follow me if that’s what they wish.  I hope to study at university – maybe computing – and keep competing.

“I want to bring back more medals for my country.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post, 9 November 2012)

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SUPPORTING INDONESIA'S DISABLED

Not a back seat person    

                               

When she finishes performing at the London Paralympics in September athlete Ni Nengah Widiasih, 19, will fly to the far side of the world.

The tiny Balinese powerlifter will spend ten days in New Zealand inspiring people with her life story and helping raise money for other disabled Indonesians.

Her trip comes thanks to the energy and initiative of Bill Russell, the chair of the Rehabilim Trust.  This NZ charity supports young, physically handicapped Indonesians learn skills they can use to earn money, and become independent.

“I first met Nengah six years ago.  She’d been crippled by polio and could only move on all fours,” said Mr Russell. The same disease also struck his father shortly after the family moved to NZ from Scotland when Bill was a teenager.

“Nengah went to Yogya for treatment and operations, then took up weightlifting in the 40 kilogram class.  Her achievements have been astonishing.”

The class relates to the athlete’s weight.  At the 2011 ASEAN ParaGames Nengah won gold, lifting 87 kilograms. NZ is sending a team of 26 to the Paralympics, Indonesia only three. 

Helping the disabled in the Republic is a curious turn about for a man whose first knowledge of Indonesians was as enemies in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

In 1963 President Soekarno tried to crush Malaysia claiming it was a creation of the former British colonial power. Commonwealth forces, including NZ soldiers, defended the new nation.

Private Russell was ready.  He’d been in Peninsula Malay since 1961 starting as a 22-year-old professional soldier patrolling the Thai border, stopping communist guerrillas heading south.

“I enjoyed being with the locals,” said Mr Russell.  “I got invited to weddings and other events. I learned a few hundred words of Pasar Malay.  There was a gentleness and politeness.

“I saw people with nothing – a situation I’d never encountered in NZ.  It caused me to think about ways to help.

“Fifty per cent of our troops were Maori.  The Malays were surprised to discover we were multicultural, unconcerned about color and ethnicity.  It helped us relate.” 

Fortunately he never saw Indonesians at the wrong end of his rifle.  When Soekarno sent three aircraft to parachute troops into Johore the young Kiwi was heading the other way on leave.

After three years soldiering he returned home, joined an agricultural supply company, got married and raised a family. He also became involved with Rotary, the volunteer international service club, and still serves in senior roles.

“I’m not a back seat person,” he said.  “My modus operandi is to make a difference.  So many people have helped me and I want to pass that on and leave things better. I’ve learned this is best done through an organization.”

It wasn’t till 1981 that he got back to the tropics – this time to Indonesia – first on holiday, then on business.  Since then he’s made well over 100 visits. 

“I’ve been so lucky and seen so much,” he said. “But I’m not a culture buff.  The more I think I know, the less I realise I know. I started a company selling seeds for horticulture and looked around for a market in Indonesia.

“In those days business was done on the strength of a handshake. A trader in Medan once owed me US $30,000.  I reminded him – he apologized for the oversight and I got a cheque a couple of days later. 

“I still stay in contact with the family.  It’s important to develop personal relationships when doing business in Indonesia. 

“This is a message I push to NZ education institutions trying to recruit Indonesian students: You’ve got to understand your customers and they need to know you – just sending in business cards doesn’t work.”

Next month (September) Mr Russell will be in Bali running a workshop where 20 Indonesian agents will get information on NZ education services from tertiary providers and immigration authorities.

His company, Education Network Indonesia, is a group of universities, polytechnics and schools presenting a common approach.

“We need to taker a fresh look at Indonesia as an education market,” he said.  “In a few years Indonesia will be a major manufacturing economy with a lower cost structure than China.

“There’s going to be a big demand for middle level management skills. This is an area where we can really help.”

While wandering the Archipelago last century the seedsman heard of Colin McLennan, a fellow Kiwi working at the Yakkum rehabilitation center he’d founded in Yogya.

“At the center a young girl wearing callipers was learning to walk using parallel bars,” Mr Russell said.  “Eventually she stepped away and walked by herself.  I saw her smile.  It’s something I’ve never forgotten.”

Impressions are fine, but actions are better.  Back in Wellington and with others (all the Rehabilim Trust’s eight unpaid directors have visited Yakkum) he set out to raise funds from well-wishers, church groups, service clubs and philanthropists around the nation.

Interest earned on money left by Mr McLennan when he died in 2007 can only be used for scholarships; two disabled young Indonesians are now being helped to study tourism and pharmacology. 

Mr Russell has promised that all donations go to Indonesia so he approached Kiwi economist Gareth Morgan who immediately offered NZ $3,000 (Rp 23 million) for Nengah’s air fares. 

In NZ Nengah will be taken to the Halberg Trust formed by former middle-distance runner Sir Murray Halberg, a gold medal winner at the 1960 Rome Olympics. 

The trust’s policy is to ‘honor sporting excellence and link people with a disability to sport and active leisure, whatever their ability and without exception.’

Said Mr Russell:  “I hope Nengah’s visit will boost people’s understanding of Indonesia while showing her that in this country we respect the rights of the handicapped.

“Sport is a major influence in the lives of the disabled in NZ. It would be great for Indonesia if Nengah wins.  Then more attention might be paid by the government to the needs of the handicapped.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 13 August 2012)

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