I am Maltese but I live and work overseas. Recently I came to Malta for a holiday, to see a friend of mine who is wheelchair bound.

While I was staying with her, I thought it would be a good idea to take her out shopping, as she never leaves the house.

Even though she has a ‘wheelchair access, no parking’ zone in front of her doorstep, someone still parked there. After half an hour searching, I managed to find the culprit and got the car moved.

I pushed my friend onto the pavement and proceeded up the road. To my amazement, I was halted in my tracks by a massive front doorstep constructed on the footpath.

I had no choice but to turn around and go the other way. A little further down, we came across vehicles parked on the footpath because the road was too narrow.

Not to be discouraged, we looked for an opening between the cars, to cross the road. Unfortunately, I could not find a space wide enough between cars on the other side to get the wheelchair through.

While walking along the road looking for a space, cars were hooting their horns telling us to go quicker since we were blocking the road. We managed to find a space between the cars the wheelchair fitted into but unfortunately the kerb was too high.

I asked my friend if I could leave her there while I looked for a place to be able to get the wheelchair onto the pavement.

On my return, I found my friend drenched in water, very upset. When I asked what happened, she said the lady on the third floor of the building cleaned her balcony and threw all the water down where she was sitting. By this stage, we had had enough and proceeded back home, to find someone else parked in front of her house, in the disabled access space.

Half an hour later, and fuming, we managed to get back inside. To make her feel better, I offered to make her a cup of tea and put the TV on to relax her. To my surprise, as soon as the TV came on, there were three clowns from an association for the disabled, doing a documentary on how much they had achieved for the disabled, showing a massive ramp they had built to access the building. Unfortunately, none of them explained how to get there in a wheelchair, as we couldn’t even get across the street!

To these people on the documentary, I suggest they sit in a wheelchair for a week and try to get around in Malta. When they manage this, they will have achieved something.

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