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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

It makes no sense because you can’t see

by

10 days ago
20250628
Jaidon Vincent

Jaidon Vincent

“My fam­i­ly go­ing Pana­ma in Au­gust!” my friend ex­claimed. Her ju­bi­la­tion was like a cold in a stan­dard one class­room. Ag­gres­sive in trans­mis­sion and near ir­re­sistible. I couldn’t help but blush and share in her joy. Her birth­day was in ear­ly Au­gust and that would be quite the present.

“Wow, that’s re­al­ly fan­tas­tic! Seems like every­one’s go­ing Pana­ma these days,” I re­spond­ed, prob­a­bly more ex­cit­ed than she was at this point.

But then seem­ing­ly out of nowhere, her dis­po­si­tion com­plete­ly changed. The young la­dy who was as ra­di­ant and bub­bly as a su­per­no­va a few sec­onds be­fore had gone cold. Was it some­thing I said? Alarm bells went off in my head, but then she start­ed talk­ing again, and pan­ic tran­si­tioned to frus­tra­tion.

“My aunt (who she lives with) said that it makes no sense I go be­cause I can’t see any­thing.”

The tem­per­a­ture of the room dropped about 15 de­grees. I had felt like some­one slammed me in the stom­ach with the biggest stone they could find at the side of the road. I had pre­vi­ous­ly been told, of­ten out of ex­as­per­a­tion, that I had an an­swer for every­thing, but in that mo­ment, I was like Chat GPT. Clean out of to­kens and couldn’t gen­er­ate any new con­tent.

I’ve heard this ex­act ar­gu­ment on so many oc­ca­sions, both di­rect­ed at me and oth­ers. For many peo­ple, ba­sic ex­pe­ri­ences with­out sight and the en­joy­ment there­of is sim­ply im­pos­si­ble to con­cep­tu­alise. An ab­sur­di­ty on par with pigs fly­ing or a bull be­ing gen­tle in a Chi­na shop.

Many peo­ple for­get that we were giv­en four oth­er sens­es with which to per­ceive and en­joy the world around us. In the case of my friend and her Pana­ma trip, the sec­ond she dis­em­barks the plane, her ears would be con­sumed by a sym­pho­ny un­like any­thing in Trinidad. The unique flow and sound of Pana­man­ian Span­ish, or the pow­er­ful, au­thor­i­ta­tive horns of ships tran­sit­ing the Pana­ma Canal, and the low hum of their im­pos­ing pow­er plants.

My friend, quite the food­ie, I imag­ine, would go mad from the au­then­tic and unique blend of herbs, spices, meats and oth­er in­gre­di­ents alien to a Trinida­di­an palate. Her sense of touch would be fas­ci­nat­ed by the var­i­ous tex­tures and sen­sa­tions of hand­i­crafts, tex­tiles, and even the feel of the pave­ment un­der her feet. Her nose too would share in the sen­so­ry buf­fet. The smell of the ocean, of the rain­forests and even the Canal would be a po­em to her ol­fac­to­ry re­cep­tors.

While all the ex­pe­ri­ences I list­ed are dandy, rather love­ly even, there’s some­thing which tran­scends all of that. Some­thing that blind or sight­ed, young or old we all pos­sess, and that’s the abil­i­ty to build mem­o­ries to­geth­er as a fam­i­ly. The mem­o­ry of stay­ing in the ho­tel to­geth­er, go­ing out on the tour and mem­o­ries so weird that you had to have been there to be­lieve it hap­pened at all. There’s some­thing spe­cial and ir­replic­a­ble about fam­i­ly ex­pe­ri­ences. See­ing all of the great­est won­ders of the world sim­ply can’t com­pare.

Be­yond the moral and emo­tion­al im­per­a­tives for in­clud­ing blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired peo­ple in ex­pe­ri­ences like my friend’s Pana­ma trip, there’s a prac­ti­cal as­pect. In form­ing re­la­tion­ships, our ex­pe­ri­ences are crit­i­cal in help­ing us con­nect to oth­ers and form ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion which even­tu­al­ly leads to deep­er and long-last­ing friend­ships. The ex­change of ex­pe­ri­ences, some­times mu­tu­al, oth­er times pe­cu­liar to the in­di­vid­ual, helps ease so­cial ten­sions, mak­ing the par­tic­i­pants more com­fort­able with each oth­er.

My fam­i­ly, for ex­am­ple, al­ways showed me around our car, let­ting me touch car parts, ex­plain­ing what dif­fer­ent sounds mean and what not. As a re­sult, this helped me to be able to ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in con­ver­sa­tions with guys my age, as au­to­mo­biles seem to be a top­ic that al­ways pops up.

And aside from hav­ing ma­te­r­i­al for con­ver­sa­tion at gath­er­ings, knowl­edge is pow­er and may even save your life. The aunt, in this case, is re­strict­ing the flow of the riv­er of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence in her niece, hand­i­cap­ping her abil­i­ty to make friends and be­come a gen­er­al­ly more round­ed per­son

With a lit­tle sup­port, blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired peo­ple can mean­ing­ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in events and out­ings, form­ing im­pact­ful and mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ences. Blind peo­ple are a part of the fam­i­ly too, so why not take us on that fam­i­ly trip to the zoo? Per­haps we can’t see the an­i­mals, but we can hear the sounds they make, and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers can de­scribe them to us. If we’re a part of the friend group, why not take us on that lime to C3? Per­haps we can’t see the dé­cor, but we can drink a smooth­ie and share a joke or two.

“My aunt said that it makes no sense...”

The on­ly non­sen­si­cal thing is shut­ting out a loved one.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion

Head­quar­ters: 118 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

ttb­wa1914@gmail.com;

(868) 624-4675;

What­sApp: (868) 395-3086.


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