Preparing for Bangalore

Its Sunday morning, June 26th. In just a few days I'll be boarding a plane that after a series of layovers will result in my landing at midnight July 2nd at 12:15am. Melissa and Quin, my wife and 18 month old son, will be coming along. The two interns, Susan and Lauren will be joining us on the 5th of July. I have to be honest, I'm not looking forward to 25 hours of travel with an 18 month old, but maybe he'll surprise us. The original plan was for me to go alone, but Melissa has been so supportive throughout this whole process, it seemed unfair to not have her come on this trip. So, she'll be doing the tourist thing, and hanging out with Nandini and her new little guy Arnav.

I hope to get some great photos and video to bring home with me. I'll be posting to the blog as much as possible, and hopefully, like in Vietnam, Melissa will stay on me to keep updating. Its really hard to do sometimes because at the end of the day I'm completely wiped out. If its anything like India, whenever I'm not in my room, I'll be "on", the people are full of questions and hunger to learn more. Already we are meeting with parents in the community, other people that work with blind people around Bangalore. Though I love it, it is also very tiring.

In addition to working in Bangalore I'll be making a weekend trip to Hyderabad. I've spoken with Santhosh Kumar, a former resident of Hyderabad who is now here in the states getting a degree in orientation and mobility. He's already a teacher of students with visual impairments. He has raised money and organized for me to make a trip to Hyderabad to talk with the staff at the school for the blind there. I'll be doing a one day workshop on the importance of independent movement for people with visual impairments, touring the school and meeting the teachers. In addition to this, I'll be hopefully setting up operations for next summer to spend a month training new instructors.

According to Santhosh there are 300 students at this school. There are 30 totally blind students in 10th grade alone. From the way I understand things, these students are academic, but not independent. They do not leave the center, and they don't have the skills to travel independently in a new environment, or very well in a known environment. Santhosh says that sighted guide, one person leading another in a specific way is not even done. As you can imagine, if you can't move around on your own, it makes it very difficult to have a job. It doesn't matter how good someone is academically, independence is what other people subconsciously want to see before they can imagine someone working and being successful.

Many people have asked me how prepared I am for India. This is a tricky question, using wisdom gained in Vietnam, as well as experience from traveling in other countries, even developed countries like Austria, every place is different. I can't come up with a detailed plan for teaching until I'm standing in the location I'll be teaching in. When I got to Vietnam, I naively assumed I'd start just like I'd start here, working on basic skills and progressing forward. In Vietnam though, I had to convince the people I was working with that blind people could be independent. They are working from a completely different set of expectations. I expect that it may be similar in India, though I'm approaching it with an open mind.

Then of course there are the completely different ways of handling traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular. Its easy to forget how powerful our white cane laws are in the US. People actually know what a white cane is. When I was in Vietnam, just because someone had a cane did not mean that the people recognized they were visually impaired. So we'll have to see how India is in this regard. Here we have ADA or the "Americans with Disabilities Act" which is a set of rules and standards that must be adhered to when designing both indoor and outdoor spaces. Things like the truncated domes at the end of sidewalks, or curb cuts for wheelchairs. This is not taking into account all the other "code" and standards that must be in place for everyone like exit signs, specific ways stairs are set up, or traffic controls and cross walks. We are very controlled here, which is a good thing for someone that can't see, because much of the environment can be depended on to behave a certain way.

This is one of the only concerns I have about the scalability of Ability Beyond the Horizon. I worry because I talk with other O&M instructors in the US and many of them are very dependent on the set up of our environment here in the states. A fundamental requirement of this work is the ability to walk into any environment and work with it. We can't prevent people from being independent because of a lack of standards. In Vietnam it required having people cross in the middle of the street rather than at cross walks, as well as not using the sidewalks at all since they were so unsafe, a completely ridiculous idea here in the United States. Everyone that we have volunteering for us will have to have an ability to think on their feet and problem solve to be successful. Orientation and mobility specialists do this to some degree all of the time, but I've noticed that many get very dependent on the way it is here in the US, and I worry that this will be difficult for them to let go of when traveling abroad. We'll see, I have faith that this is a small hurdle to overcome, and maybe won't even be an issue, but I can't say I haven't worried about it.

I'll be writing as much as possible detailed notes as to the pacing and organization of training while I'm in India, so that future volunteers will have a guide to work with while they are in another country. Don't worry, I won't put them here, that will quickly lose many readers. :-)

My next update will be from India, while you wait, have a look at some traffic in India that was sent to me recently. What you see is a man lying back on a motorcycle texting while going down what appears to be a highway. Lets hope I don't see this guy while teaching street crossings in Bangalore!!




~Mickey