64-year-old Gaby Kester is confined to a wheelchair after a stroke. She knows how important nursing is to people like her, even and especially when private money is scarce. Thus, the actress has a clear message for politicians and parties.
Gabi Kester misses television, and not just for creative reasons: “Well, financially I have to say: yes, I miss television. I am also very panicked about what will happen next,” she said in an interview with the German Press Agency in Munich. In 2008, her successful career as an actress and comedian was suddenly cut short by a stroke. Today she is confined to a wheelchair.
“I have a second level of care and I, for example, cannot prepare anything for myself. But when I tell the health insurance company that I need a higher level, they say that I do not have enough dementia and that the stroke was a long time ago. I still weigh 58 kilograms at 1.76, and this is not funny,” a resident of Cologne told dpa.
“I have a cleaner and someone who does my shopping for me, and I have an incredibly kind neighbor who looks after me a bit too. If it weren’t for all this, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, but probably in the trash can.”
She feels frustrated by politics. “I’ve paid I don’t know how many taxes in my life. And you can’t treat people like that.”
Kester: Every politician should have a nurse on duty
Kester also uses this conversation to settle scores with politicians: “I would like all the politicians, the medical staff to work at least one shift. And then they would have to open their mouths. Applauding the medical staff is not enough because they cannot pay rent, feed themselves, or properly look after their children.” All the people in nursing homes have worked for this country for a long time and the way they are being treated now is simply unacceptable.
What she also wants: “80 percent of all people who work in nursing homes and hospitals are foreigners. And I look forward to the day when an AfD member is lying around somewhere and then has to rely on a Brazilian woman to hopefully wipe his ass with sandpaper.”
“It didn’t matter to me that they were macho,” she says, looking back.
From this Thursday, Kester can be seen in cinemas in the documentary “What We Laughed About”, which examines the portrayal of women in German TV shows from the 1990s and early 2000s. The comedian at that time was considered a pioneer and was, for example, usually the only woman on the RTL show “7 days – 7 goals.”
“The guys from 7 Days, 7 Heads were very nice to me backstage because I was scared there too. And then they hugged me and everything. And they said: they won’t do anything to you there, just do it and get it over with,” said the 64-year-old. “It was great, and it didn’t matter to me that they were macho. I trained in a pub and that’s the order of the day.”
“I’m 64 years old now and getting out of prison,” says Kester.
Looking back, working in the pub prepared her well for television: “There’s a lot of suffering there and you have to deal with things like slaps and so on. It was so automatic for me that I immediately turned around and slapped my hand away. It was the best school in television.”
She now knows that what she did as one of the few women in the German humor scene at the time also had a social significance: “The older I got, the more I realized that what I was doing was political. I don’t work in an office and I have the opportunity to say things that other people can’t say because of their job or something else. I’m 64 years old now and I’m leaving now.”
dpa/krott