(CNN Español) – In the room where we received a small piece of paper, a diploma and a computer. The computer is my best friend, with whom Milagros Costabel, who can not see with his eyes, connects with the world. The dice diploma that will be part of Harvard’s 2025 generation. And the couple dibuja a barquito of papel with a phrase: “ahí van los sueños”.
Esa nave de papel ha debido atravesar varias tormentas. But it was prepared.
Since then, his mother has changed her bed, proposing, the furniture and objects of the humble house in the creation and of its own property. Dice that do not want to be approached at the obstacle course, because “the real life is not there”. And, one by one, Milagros had to sort out all the difficulties and the ones that brought the real life.
Nació with less than 25 weeks of gestation, weighing 740 grams. Study three months in intensive care and sorevivió de milagro. For his name: “Milagros fue un milagro”, dice su madre, María Bionda. Although not alive, its retention does not result in oxygen deficiency. “Prematurity retinopathy”, I dictate, to clarify. Milagros no ve, although it is a convention. Some say that it is true that it is very good, with the eyes and with the hands.
María the teacher from my chic in Milagros to be self-sufficient: make the bed, wear the ropes, dress, bathe … And her husband Chloe, two years mayor, was his best aliada. The one that removes the obstacles of the truck, the one that plays with it, the one that removes and moves the car to pay well in the photos. “His friends do not know who he is,” María doubled. “Help to create free”.
But in 2006, at the age of 7, Chloe developed a cerebral tumor. After a treatment of more than one year between Montevideo and Buenos Aires, the army of Milagros failed, and with it was his best friend.
For Mary, this moment marks the life of the whole family. “Yo me levanté por ella —cuenta— y ella me levantó a mí”. “Teaching to be independent. Ya no tenía a la hermana. She wants to be locked up by her, she has to live her career ”.
Education with barriers
Although it is known that Milagros was admitted to the Harvard branch, many are pushing the emphasis on the Uruguayan education system. Political associations and people in general are hunting in social speeches of the success of Milagros as a national log.
For that matter, it has been spreading rapidly in a large hilo of Twitter that things are always more complex. Alli habló of the difficulties and barriers that enshrined in the public education of a city of interior of Uruguay as Colonia, and account as all hubi side imposible sin su esfuerzo, el de su mama and the support of his family and friends.
Apenas entered the public school, received a keychain from a family friend: a braille machine. Mary quickly learned the tactile writing system, “and all the days she had 10, 15 days to transcribe in order for the powder masters to correct her next. For 6 years, you have entered the lyceum ”.
“I am learning to teach her”, explains Maria. From the braille to the ink and from the ink to the braille. Asia advance and learn. When working on your first computer, you have access to computing and typing classes. “Tenia to write without miraculous teclas”, double stone. The log is the change of life.
In the second, as well as a Twitter account, he found “a mountain of people who, without knowing how to do it, were able to support and allow themselves to learn as they go”. Abundó in one of his professors: Gerardo Menéndez. This Geography teacher learns braille to teach, teach and correct. Fue él as the teaching in Milagros como is the world, the continents, the rivers and mountains, the traverses of maps with reliefs and textures, that it differs design. “Creo que todas las personas — ciegas o no— merecen tener uno, dos, muchos Gerardos en su tray trayectoria educational,” writes.
“If you’ve been married and your family is not supported… —it interrupts, while it encodes the men — the system is not prepared for people without knowledge. Many say that they want to be able to. Pero sin herramientas no se puede ”, agrega.
But as well as you have to learn many things, when the English learns only, through his account, “mirando” videos, “leyendo” in English, so on with his future. “Yo digo mirar”, se ríe. One of his English professors does not want to teach. According to this teacher, his impediment is his. “But I promised myself that I would learn English”.
Hoy, with the English as aliado, his best friend is the computer and the cellular phone, which connects with the world. These devices and their accessibility system through sound, he was allowed to develop an inaudible capacity to listen to accelerated, inaccessible audio to any mortal. “I do not need the things I have, I do not have the patience to listen at normal times”.
Asi, listen to the text of messages that read on social media, have books. “Download a book on Amazon and read it on a date”, dice. “It’s extra speed to help me make those things very fast.”
I also learned to play the piano. Y nos lo demuestra. One of the songs that melodies and, without losing music, simply moves the keyboard and transforms it into music. “That’s the absolute love song,” said his father, Juan Costabel.
Maintain the family
Three years ago, Juan quit his job and had to reinvent himself. A great friend of the family — the one who wears the braille machine — Argentinean resident in Europe, performed at his home in the entire former Colonial of Sacramento, and also enjoyed a gastronomic establishment. A small restaurant with views of the Uruguayan Uruguayan river basins on the plateau, near Buenos Aires.
The house has all the vestigios of the Portuguese era, which governs Colonia in sails XVII and XVIII, and from its ventures can face the centenary empedrado of its calls, now vacations of tourists debited to the covid-19 pandemic.
The “sanitary emergence” and the frontier of Uruguay were the grace wave for the economy familiar. A new obstacle in the life of Milagros. Colonia y su ciudadela viven del turismo. The restaurant has been operating for more than three months, between March and July 2020. “We are ready to go. We go to cero. Nothing ”, Juan explains.
María’s hermana traía el surtido del supermarket, para que no les faltara nada, en Milagros se puso a trabajar: empezó a vender sus periodiska articles and inglés a medracionales: Foreign Policy, The Telegraph, HuffPost, Euronews, Business Insider. .. “First opinion notes, which are the easiest. But when I was forced to write notes about the pandemic, I attended my first press conference, met with periodicals of Verdad, met with some important people and decided what did I do? ´ ”.
With its work for international media, it can pay for electricity (“which is charismatic”) and cellular telephones of the whole family. “Si no, no sé cómo hubiéramos hecho”, double María.
It is believed that Milagros empresses the idea of irse to study outside. Although the University of Uruguay is public and free, “there is no need to study here”, it is explained. “Since the 15 years, more or less, the illusion of living has the experience of living afuera”. Pretending to be in Spain, but always at EE.UU. en la cabeza ”.
Harvard
“If the pandemic permits, sale in August,” he said. There are two meetings in Zoom with Harvard employees and their future generation partners “of all lads”. Alli pretends to study Political Science and has another idiom.
The university will pay for the studies, the accommodation, and it will be possible to work on campus. ‘Tienen cosas que no soy capa de imaginarme. Todavía lo estoy processing mentally ”.
My mom loves her with her. “I want to see where I’m going, I’m going to sleep and I’ll be back.” Does not have a plate for the passage, but has received receipts for the package and the grade, is not available to acceptors. Dice that will find the form of ahorrar the dinero and pagárselo ella.
The decision to post at Harvard’s Tomo Milagros sola, without the initial blueprint of his fathers that, even if he is opusieron, he does not want much to be done.
For media in 2020, a friend periodically comments on the probability. If you are an investigator and think it is possible for her to post. But it explains that this case has no hope. If more than 57,000 people are posted, the majority of EE.UU. and people with plates. Harvard only accepts 4% of those who postulate. I know that the most likely era is that there is no quedara ”. “My parents are dying: I’m doing something that I’m not going to get rid of.” And he said to himself: “I want to do it because I do not intend to do it, I want to do it again and again”.
But Milagros knows milagros, and overcomes obstacles. And this is one more.
‘Cuando lei welkom by Harvard’, puse a llorar ‘, dice. “I was called my mother and the pedi that is in the electronic box. Quería estar segura de lo que decía. Geen podía creerlo …. Nadie podía creerlo ”. “Fue una locura”, agrega María. When she had a baby, Maria grabbed a video of her husband and her husband. Watch the video’s viralizó.
The video reads the notice. Its popularity in social media has created an exponential manner. Taking a Twitter account (@mili_costabel) leads the media for those who work, with 500 followers open, stepping into 4,000 cases in just days. “An audience that has no antiquity”, sings.
Now that many people have known the concoctions through speeches, they are eager to make a direct contact with the people. “El otro día me preguntaron, por egampl, si yo veía en mis sueños”, lanza sin dar la respuesta. Curiosity me carcome. “¿Y? How are you? ”, Le pregunto. “No puedo ver tampoco en los sueños —contesta—. No such images as you. Once upon a time there was a podium, but the sun did not end because we ”, and launched the car.
“Soybeans todos”
Milagros surprises his improvised popularity, and declares that he does not pretend to be an example of anything, nor of anyone, that his history is unique, like all. “What I think, what happens to me, how I recover the things I do not have the form of other people without life,” he said.
But his mother pretends to send a message: “hay que terminar con eso de que el que no ve no puede”. “Me molesta el` pobrecita” —agrega Milagros— soy som kualquier persona, solo que no veo. Many things that are divine, especially … but they are all ”. Y María acota: “Ella te exige, te deja la cabeza así. I do not want to do anything ”.
Paradoxically, Milagros creates that it has a sale. The reality of life is to “see the different things”. It is true that “there is no series that is without it”.
But there is one thing that speaks for itself: “I have to ask you”. Create that it is fair, because its fathers always insist that it be beautiful inside. It is difficult to agree on the opposite.
Tampoco knows how to read visually the Harvard diploma that so enorgullece, that of the well-being and that is not in braille. But he knows what he means: he wants his money. Y allí va ella.