Hyper Island

Hyper Island, Doors and that Elevator

On Monday we had to leave the hotel at 8 O’clock in the morning take the metro and go to Hyper Island. I am terrible with geography in general and directions in particular. And I often leave a bit later than the group as I spend my lovely mornings replying to work emails.

Diala Chehade was still in the lobby. She was my Saviour on couple of ocasions, not only with directions but with other things as well. We went together to Hyper Island. In Sweden something that strikes you is the way that the infrastructure has been adapted to the needs of the disabled.

Doors, elevators, metro stations, hotels, restaurants, toilets, streets and traffic lights, everything is designed and well thought out. It is striking. Standing there, I felt how seriously damaged both I and my country are.

A Lebanese female friend was married to a Paraguayan man. He died, she came back home to Lebanon with three children. Two of them had physical disabilities. Samar my friend, could not grant her children Lebanese nationality. Women cannot grant their children their homeland nationality, even if the children were born on Lebanese soil. We claim to be a very progressive country. We are in comparison to the misery surrounding us nevertheless that does not mean ours is not a progressive misery.

It is a fact that Lebanon regularly suffers from electricity shortages, small wars from time to time, a big war every couple of years, in addition to political assassinations, financial crises, and traffic jams but hey it is our country. It is not a pair of old shoes. You cannot throw it away or replace it. It is our homeland. And Samar is a Lebanese citizen who has three children for whom she has to pay their yearly residence fees. They have no right to free medical care in the same way that other Lebanese citizens with special needs have. She has to pay for expensive long term treatments and rehabilitation. If she had a penis the children would have been Lebanese citizens. But she does not have a penis and here I am standing at a traffic light that is prepared with sound equipment for the visually impaired. I can only wish Samar had a penis, or different laws. If only she had the choice.

I arrived at a building where on the fourth floor is situated a progressive academy called Hyper Island. I had previously visited their website and I knew that the building was a former jail. So I expected a poorly renovated structure. But it was not. The main entrance door, the elevator, the fourth floor door to Hyper Island, the toilets and everything else were quipped for the disabled.

Hyper Island staff included black, disabled, Muslims, gays and immigrants among other minorities. And they all snack on fruit, this is too much. I am panicked, I wanted to catch the first flight and go back to “normal” to Lebanon, Darfur or Damascus anywhere but not here. I thought to myself this could not be true. Javerria has planned this. The Swedish Institute is throwing a perfect image in my face. It has to be a conspiracy; Abou Walid is right after all.

Happily I did not catch a plane. Javerria was innocent. The Swedish Institute was innocent. This is, in fact, the real Sweden, and they are real people.
Do not be fooled by the name itself. The name Hyper Island in itself defies definition. Its central point is to challenge orthodox educational systems. Its guiding focus is challenging it in a spirit of fun, entertainment and enquiry towards a final goal of personal growth.

Hyperlove - The Story Behind The Wall from Johan Blomborg on Vimeo.

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Hyper Island is a fascinating learning-teaching experience. The whole structure, the staff, the programs and the students are breathtaking. The percentage of HI graduates who find employment is ninety five percent. They even have hyper babies as I was told.

They are thinking in opening up in Beirut or maybe in Dubai. Beirut is the right place; it remains being the cultural and educational capital for the Arab world. The biggest target group for Hyper Island is in Beirut. Sure, they have big number of potential students in Dubai. Those will come to Beirut but not vice versa.

My last day on Hyper Island was on 12th of June 2009. It was a long day as we were preparing the presentations for our projects. I left the facility around 10 O’clock in the evening. My team work was interrupted by outside smoking breaks.

Going out for a smoke, and while in the elevator a 23 year old Swedish guy asked for a light. We stood outside smoking a cigarette, discussing briefly some life issues. We ended up, later that night, having some whisky and I started to see Sweden from a different standpoint. That night I made a lifelong friend with whom I will be working in Lebanon on an image project about the country through Swedish Eyes next week.

Later on tonight I will say more about the friend, the project and Sweden through his eyes.

(By the way the metaphor about countries not being like an old pair of shoes, is not necessarily a comment on the fact that Mark walks around barefoot. Similarly it carries no implications regarding his complex relationship with Ireland his “homeland”!)