I couldn't imagine being better taken care of, Dr. Goud put me up in this very exclusive club that he's a member of. I ate dinner with him and some very nice people, and had tea with a former commissioner of Hyderabad, so it'd be like having tea with the mayor of Atlanta or something. Everyone was very kind, tending to my every need, to the point of almost being smothering to this guy who is not used to anyone even getting drinks for him, let alone opening all the doors, carrying his bags, ordering his food, accompanying him to the zoo, wanting to sit with him at the airport... you get the idea. In the US we just aren't used to that kind of treatment :-)
During my time at Devnar I met with the teachers and parents, as well as many of the students. I introduced them to sighted guide, though I have my doubts as to whether they'll use it yet, and also basic cane techniques. There is only so much that can be accomplished in a day, and I feel that after next summer when we have someone training there for a month that we'll be able to make some more permanent changes in school culture.
One of the things I find frustrating about these schools, this also was the case in Vietnam, is that they have access to technology and some resources that someone donated, in this case a Mount Batten Braille Writer, an expensive tool, and they rarely let the students use it for fear that they'll break it. This saddens me, because I'm sure the intention of the donor was that the kids would actually make use of these technologies rather than just being used to show to visitors. This isn't just at Devnar, I've seen this at most of the centers I've visited. I got the same impression about the library, it just didn't seem to be set up in a way that the children would be using it on a regular basis.
This brings me to another aspect of the organization that is hopefully blossoming here in India. We need to find a way to get books to these kids, as well as magnifiers. They are teaching children to read braille with great fervor, and yet most of the braille the kids ever touch comes in the form of their textbooks. They don't have much to read simply for the joy of reading. Additionally, once they graduate, they'll not have much access to braille again, so it makes one wonder why the students spend so much time studying it. I'd like to start a program through ABH that provides recreational/supplementary reading material to these kids. I know there are many parents in the states who have a stack of braille books and magazines just sitting there that their child has outgrown, but they don't want to throw it away. So, I want to repurpose those books, and send them to these places in India, and other countries, with the understanding that the kids actually USE them. They MUST be read, and enjoyed, if I come to the school and find the braille still crisp, the pages unbent and clean, I won't be a happy camper :-) Perhaps if I lay it out in this way, they'll actually spread the books around.
The other thing is a magnifier/monocular program. I know that in the US we don't prescribe these until the child has been properly seen by at least an optometrist, but again this is something highly unrealistic in the developing world. I've met MANY children here that are visually impaired that are functionally illiterate with print, when in the states braille would not even be considered as a reading medium for them. The difference is, these children have no means to access the print, where in the US they would have a magnifier to keep in their pocket. These things are not expensive, we just need to get them here.
So two new initiatives, I'd love for someone to come forward and offer to head them up. Anyone amongst the readership feel so moved, and would like to take this project on? I'd love to somehow involve American schools for the blind in these things as well as my friends with itinerant teaching loads. I think it would be very educational for these kids to learn about children they can relate to in other parts of the world. We can start with just one school and see how it goes... Anyway, just me day dreaming, hopefully we can turn the dream into a reality.
In other news, I was pleasantly surprised to get an email from Bangkok this morning. They are asking for us to train in Thailand, and they even asked about the costs. This is very encouraging since it seems that our little endeavor is getting some real legs. They want me to teach in September, which definitely can't happen, but its showing that this initiative will have to become more than a summer project in years to come. Grants first though, I've got to feed the kid and keep the power on :-) Thanks Deb Gleason at Perkins International for passing along my information.
Ok, pics and video, for those of you reading this in your email, you'll have to go to the actual site to see the video, they don't often go through email. That link is: www.abilitybeyondthehorizon.org/blog.php My apologies on video quality, these were taken with my cell phone. Pictures after the videos.
This first video are kids fascinated with the power window of the car. You can get a sense of the sheer amount of students that are here, and how they were all over the place all of the time. I've included two, one is me teaching this guy to put the window up, you can see my hand move in at ten seconds in, and the second video is this guy defending his window button as the other kids want to explore. Also look at the other kids just exploring the car, they clearly don't have a lot of experience with cars. Both videos are very short.
In this video you can see the morning check in, this is just a short piece of it. The lighting comes and goes, but its very interesting to see how this is done.
In this video its clear that these students don't have enough canes, and that the whole idea is new to them. This was just a small number of the students who were allowed to play with them, I was crazily moving around trying to introduce some semblance of cane technique so that they could see the value. Every moment it seemed like I had a kid or a parent come to me and say, "Please sir, show me how to use the cane?" "My son, he's totally blind, can you teach him?". It was tough, and cements the need for training here next summer.
How many kids can we put on a merry-go-round? They were going SO much faster than this video shows. These types of activities are useful for kids to get the body/sensory input they are often craving which tends to result in rocking and other self-stimulatory movements in children with visual impairments. Incidentally, the rate of these inappropriate self-stim behaviors seems to be much less here in India, this is purely casual observation though.
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| SO many kids!! This is morning check in. |
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| Morning breakfast, this was half the kids, they eat in two shifts |
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This hand on shoulder technique is how most of the children move around the school. The one with the most vision leads the group.
I'm hoping this weekend that we'll be able to do something touristy. Melissa is trying to line something up where I might be able to see wildlife. Thanks for the comments on facebook and the emails, they're very kind. ~Mickey |
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