Exposed by an Egyptian diver ... a British story diving in a wheelchair

Shaima Abdullah

The human will may not know the limits. Can we imagine that a woman with a seat donated the mastery of diving no matter how much and time it took?

The story is from Britain, but the Arab audience knew it through a YouTube channel for the diving community, in the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheikh, where the director of the channel published pictures of one of the city's famous divers, called Tamer Salman, who was honored by the Diver International diving magazine as one of the best divers in the world, from The divers accepted the interested ones, due to his professionalism in providing safety and security factors that he followed while diving with a British lady with special needs.

A few hours and the diver's pictures with the British lady underwater were scouring the social media sites, between a lie to the image in which the diver appears, as he pushed the wheelchair of an underwater lady in a depth of more than 24 meters. .

In a special statement to the island, the diver is considered a case of controversy that happened naturally, in the Arab world, no one knows the English woman who refused to surrender to her disability that prevented her from her favorite sport, so she worked on a special diving project, costing her two years of age and planning, to produce this image to the world in a year 2013, roaming the whole world, until you reach Egypt.

Salman tells about his project that roamed the world, saying, "I am the diving instructor in charge of the English Lady Sue Austin project, an integrated project to challenge disability, and not just an idea that suddenly came up."

Austin was honored in many international forums and NASA, but the matter shocked everyone in the Egyptian communication sites, as Salman says, "The English lady is one of the diving enthusiasts in the Red Sea, before she was subjected to disability, and she was one of the annual attendees of Sharm El-Sheikh."

Sudden obstruction
"I got a lot of advanced training courses in scuba diving, but suddenly, Austin was exposed to a genetic disease that attacks the muscular and nervous system, which lost her the ability to control muscles and nerves in her body, and with age, the disease attacks her fiercely, and one of his first symptoms is paralysis." , And loss of mobility. "Of course it was shocking for an athlete, who overnight became a wheelchair prisoner, not moving without him, Austin lost movement, but she never lost hope.

350 dives before Austin hit with its motor disability, which did not prevent her from completing her sporting career with 250 new dives, she joined her sports career, through a program she put in place, using her wheelchair, with special modifications to it, and formed a special team with her friends, designers and technicians, To create a special design for additive modifications that allow it to be used under water, to be a catalyst for making ballet-like movements, through which you can communicate its message to people, that its chair will not prevent it from its passion for diving.

special design
Engineering design workshops for the chair, design for wings for diving, special additions to install the chair and move it under water, and how to deal with it on land and under water, Salman explains the amendments made to the wheelchair to suit underwater diving, and adding special motors and buoyancy devices to control those weights, to help him On the move becomes like an underwater plane, "" It was never a pure coincidence, or a sudden adventure, but it is a study that lasted nearly two years, so that the followers see these pictures. "

A special love made by Austin, for the Red Sea, and despite her previous experiences in the cold lakes of England, her pioneering experience in the Red Sea and Sharm El Sheikh achieved the widest spread, was published on TED global platform, and NASA gave her a special space for diving, and the Netherlands honored her as the most influential woman around The world, although she wanted the idea to spread from Egypt at its beginning, but her desire was not fulfilled until after about seven years.