Even in moments of bankruptcy, when partners betrayed him and he lost everything, he refused to succumb to the inertia that Abai describes so vividly. “I will prove that I am not the last,” he told himself, drawing on qairat (will) and on the steady encouragement of his wife. He worked again, starting over, building again, teaching others, creating spaces for people with disabilities to develop skills, autonomy, and confidence. His 20+ years of community leadership, advocacy for legislative change, and mentorship of young athletes further reflect Abai’s call to purposeful service rather than empty prestige. Through Duysengali’s story, Abai’s words are not abstract ethics, they become lived experience. The antidote to vice is not punishment; it is meaningful labor infused with dignity. The antidote to aimlessness is contribution. And the antidote to moral decay is the kind of unwavering discipline and service that define Duysengali’s life.
Where Abai warns of those who seek importance through gossip, manipulation, or idleness, Duysengali represents the inverse: a man who earned community respect not by rhetoric but by relentless action; not by begging favors but by creating opportunities for others; not by idle roaming but by purposeful movement. In the Tolyq Adam sense, his life harmonizes aqyl (mind), jurek (heart), and qairat (will) through work that uplifts others.
Duysengali Ospanov was born in a time and place where life demanded more from some than from others, and he understood this early. He grew up in a Qazaq household where responsibility was not an abstract value but an everyday practice. When his parents passed away, the younger siblings remained under his care. Though he had two older brothers, they already had families of their own, and the moral weight of the household eventually settled on his shoulders. “I had to start working early,” he recalls. “I had to raise the younger ones.” What could have been a burden instead became the first clue to the way his mind, heart, and will would shape the rest of his life. He studied to become a mechanic, but higher education remained unfinished. Life needed him sooner than any degree could. He entered the workforce as a Komsomol youth, driven not by dreams of prestige but by necessity. Yet even then, he carried a restless curiosity, an instinct to build, to fix, to create. That instinct would return later in life, strengthened by hardship and refined by purpose.
At twenty-four, everything changed. An accident shattered his spine, leaving him paralyzed and facing a future he had never imagined. “My arms weren’t working for a year and a half,” he says quietly, the memory still sharp. For a long time, the world around him was measured in inches rather than kilometers. A chair instead of movement. Silence instead of the rhythm he once knew. He had never met people with disabilities before — had barely encountered the very concept. Suddenly, he was living inside that reality, trying to understand what remained of himself.
But inside that silence, a fire lit itself. “I thought, no, I should live,” he says. The first victories were small: a twitch in his fingers, a movement in the arm, a moment of laughter after weeks of fear. Eventually, he fought his way back to mobility in a wheelchair. Then came the day he first sat behind the wheel of a car again, hands trembling, yet determined. That taste of freedom, of movement, of possibility, would later define his life’s work. When perestroika arrived in the 1990s, Qazaqstan was a landscape of chaos, opportunity, and survival. He entered business because there was no alternative. “I needed to survive,” he explains. He opened the first kiosk in his region, a small box of food and clothing, modelled after what he had seen in Leningrad. He was living in a village at the time, not in the city, but he recognized opportunity where others saw confusion. From kiosks he moved into construction, creating building blocks with handmade molds. “Several people, a team,” he says. “We made everything ourselves.” Later, he worked in farming, mowing hay, selling meat, and trading grain. For nearly a decade, he lived by the rhythm of the land, another kind of discipline that shaped his endurance.
Yet disability was always there, not as an obstacle, but as a reality he had to navigate in a society that did not yet know how to include him. Qazaqstan had laws, but not mechanisms. Rights, but not implementation. He encountered discrimination openly: banks refusing loans, officials doubting capacity, institutions treating disability as deficit. “Until a disabled person proves they are the same as everyone else, they won’t believe you,” he says. He felt this deeply, not only for himself but for all those he met through his growing involvement in community work. And here, another transformation began. Over time, he realized that his entrepreneurial drive was not only about income, it was about meaning. He founded “Umit” (Hope), a public organization that would become a center of training, adaptation, and empowerment for people with disabilities in the region. For more than twenty years, he and his team have offered courses in computer literacy, business basics, and financial literacy, skills that open doors to independence. “A person today must know everything,” he insists. “You cannot move forward in the market if you are specialized in only one thing.”
He became chairman of the organization “Nadezhda,” president of the Kostanay Regional Parasports Federation, and a key figure in disability advocacy. He traveled across Qazaqstan and Russia, leading motor rallies for five consecutive years to demand restoration of laws allowing for cars with manual controls for drivers with disabilities. These rallies were not symbolic, they were acts of civil activism rooted in courage. “We wanted the authorities to restore our rights,” he says. Sometimes there were fifteen cars, sometimes eighteen, people with disabilities driving across steppes and cities, showing the country what independence looks like. But still, the laws did not change. And so he turned to the solution he could control. He learned to install manual control systems for cars, first through a contract with Czechoslovakia, later with manufacturers in Russia. Qazaqstan had no factory that produced this equipment, no institution willing to take responsibility. He filled that void with his own hands, his own knowledge, his own entrepreneurial spirit. The devices he installs allow paralyzed people, people with limited hand function, and people in wheelchairs to drive independently. “So they can travel to work and school independently,” he repeats. Independence, dignity, and movement: these are the foundations of his work. His dream has always been to open a factory in Qazaqstan. “If we opened one, we could serve all of Central Asia,” he says. But time, resources, and systemic barriers prevented this vision from fully materializing. Still, the dream itself carries purpose. He now hopes to pass that dream to the next generation
His household reflects the same spirit of mutual support. His wife, also a wheelchair user and a law graduate, works alongside him in the public organization. They dance together, wheelchair dances that transcend limitations and celebrate movement in another form. Their marriage of thirty-two years has been shaped by hardship and deep resilience. When he went bankrupt once, losing everything, it was she who told him: “This is just a dark streak. There will be a white one.” Her belief carried him when his own strength faltered. “I wanted to prove to myself that I’m not the last,” he remembers. And he rose again.
His days are full, meetings with city and regional akimats, sports training, community work, installation projects, consultations with districts, helping families obtain equipment or resolve bureaucratic issues. His schedule runs from 7 a.m. to 11 or midnight. “Life is movement,” he says. “I don’t give myself rest.” Sports is a source of joy, he is an International Master of Sports in table tennis and organizes the annual Ospanov Cup, attracting 18-20 athletes from Qazaqstan and Russia. He mentors younger athletes, leads teams to competitions, and delights in their successes. “When my students buy an apartment or start their own work, this gives me strength,” he says. Their achievements become his fuel. He is also a man who finds solace in nature: fishing, traveling to historical sites, visiting ancient settlements like Turkestan and Saraichik. These journeys connect him to ancestral memory, grounding him in something larger than the present moment. Yet he worries deeply about Qazaqstan’s rural areas. “Young people leave,” he says. “Villages are emptying.” He imagines a system where the state gives livestock, land, and equipment to those willing to work honestly, rewarding diligence, holding people accountable, and revitalizing rural economies. His concern for the countryside echoes his broader vision of fairness, dignity, and opportunity, values that run through every part of his life.
When speaking of Abai, he cannot choose a single word. “Every word has deep meaning,” he says. Abai’s timeless moral guidance resonates with him because he has lived through the same questions of character, strength, and community that Abai wrote about. His own life embodies the Tolyq Adam ideal, not through theory, but through action: intellect sharpened by necessity, heart strengthened by service, will shaped by adversity. When asked what advice he would give entrepreneurs with disabilities, he says simply: “Assess your strength correctly and believe in yourself. Be persistent and patient. Study your field from all sides.” Success, to him, is not wealth. “True success is when your work brings spiritual satisfaction. When you can help others.” He looks to the future with clarity. He wants development for his organization, opportunities for young people, and competent entrepreneurs who can represent Qazaqstan internationally. He wants his students, and future generations of people with disabilities, to rise higher than he could. He dreams of teaching business management, passing down his knowledge, but time is scarce, and there are always competitions, trips, responsibilities. Still, he knows that someday he will mentor the next wave of leaders.
And so Duysengali Ospanov moves forward, steadily, persistently, expanding the circle of what is possible for others. His work benefits his family, his community, his region, and the larger idea of inclusion in Qazaqstan. The annual open cup was held in his name. In the harmony of his actions, one can feel the quiet truth of Abai’s teachings: that a full person is one whose aqyl (mind), jurek (heart), and qairat (will) live not only for oneself, but for the betterment of others.