"It has to be really dirty first"

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Samuel Flach started his community service in Africa at the age of 20 - and returned paraplegic. Today the 25-year-old is studying ethnology. In the interview, he tells us about the path that brought him back to life.

Samuel, the last time we saw each other, you were still very healthy. What happened in Africa in 2011?

I worked in an orphanage in Uganda for a year and then went on to Zanzibar with three friends. There I ran into the sea and made a dive - unfortunately at the wrong angle.

Your head hit the bottom and suddenly you couldn't move. How did you get out of the water again?

Not at all at first. I thought, “That's it now.” The past, present and future shot through my head and I felt like I was zooming out of my body. Interestingly, I didn't feel any fear - it came later. Fortunately, locals pulled me out of the water. Then we went to the hospital by helicopter.

Your fifth cervical vertebra is broken. So you can no longer move anything below.

Exactly, I can no longer feel the torso and legs. But the biceps still work! That means I can push my wheelchair myself. However, I can no longer move my fingers or raise my arms in a controlled manner. Then I'll hit myself.

What are the biggest challenges in your everyday life?

The excretory functions. In the case of paraplegics, these are usually unpredictable. That burdens me the most.

I imagine that at first it is difficult to understand that one is paraplegic.

For me it took at least nine months. I had a first psychotic phase about four weeks after the accident. This is the case with many paraplegics.

How was that expressed?

Strange fantasies in my head bloated so much that I took them for real. For example, I thought the doctors would give me pills that would make me unable to move. And that I am only persuaded that I am paraplegic. I also believed that when I parted ways with my family and friends, I would feel better. I sent everyone out of the room and insulted them.

That sounds like a really tough phase ...

Yes. But I think it's important that you feel really dirty for a while and that you struggle with everything. In the meantime, a kind of reorientation is taking place, which can then continue in a positive way.

Do you have a tip for other people to whom something similar happens?

Give yourselves time! I think that is the most important and, at the same time, most frustrating piece of advice. Finding your way back after a paraplegia is simply a lengthy process in which a lot has to happen. I haven't quite finished it either. That's why I consciously face my fears again and again.

For example?

I went to the beach where the accident happened three months ago with my girlfriend and my mother. Since then I've been pretty scared of the sea - and then of this particular place! Even so, it was the first time I had bathed in the sea since I've been in a wheelchair.

Can it be said that you have now found your way back to life?

That is absolutely right. The fact that I am in a wheelchair no longer concerns me every day. That comes more from the outside.

Because people ask you about it?

Yes. Most of the time it happens indirectly. Many ask me how I am. If I then answer “good”, they say: “Depending on the circumstances, right?” And every time I think to myself: “No, I'm really fine!”

Do strangers approach you differently now?

There are people who react extremely insecure when they meet me, or who are burdened with prejudices without realizing it. They can't look me in the eye and don't speak to me, only to my companions. Or they help me without asking if I even want to. And for others, the visible physical limitation is not so in the foreground - I tend to make friends with them.

Samuel, you stand up against racism. Does a feeling of being marginalized play a role?

I think that has something to do with my new perspective, among other things. I now know what it feels like to constantly attract attention and be pigeonholed without being asked. This is also the case in Germany for people with darker skin color - not just people with a disability.

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