Who is the blind one now?

Feeling what it means to be blind is not difficult for sighted people. Feeling what it means to be sighted is a much more creative act for a blind person...But can you really share the experience of being blind if you had your eyes open just a few seconds ago?

Eugene is in his thirties, and blind since he is thirteen. He says he remembers the places, he grew up here, he knows the mountains and the waterfalls and the little ups and downs on the path behind his house. As we were walking together on the little path that leads to his compound, through the dense vegetation of bananas and coffee plants on our sides right and left, it seemed to me that I was actually the one who was blind, stumbling over the little stones on the way and slipping on the wet parts of the ground... it happened more than once that I almost fell down on Eugene who was making his way with safe and grounded steps just in front of me. He left his stick at home, telling me: „this is my place“.

But lets start from the first encounter...or even before. When I woke up on this particular morning, I didn’t put my glasses or contact lenses on. I watched out of the window and beyond, just perceiving the almost unshaped colours out there... and wondered how it would be, if these colours would not even be there. If it was all grey, or even so dark that no light would get into my eyes and I started hearing the birds and their chirping in thirds with this idea of what it could be...

On that morning, I decided to watch a movie till the end that I had started the days before: „Dancer in the dark“ by Lars von Trier. An almost blind woman (Bjoerk) escaping from her sad and dark working reality, dancing through her daydreams, to the soundtrack of factory machines, passing trains and pencils writing on paper... 

On this very Sunday we were invited in the afternoon to our neighbours house, to a traditional meeting, a sort of reunion, taking place. So we went, and as I entered the room, I saw a man sitting there with a sort of Kalimba, which is a musical instrument I got to know a while ago in Germany and immediately fell in love with. I even brought one with me to Africa, but the one he was holding was made all out of wood, with parts of bamboo, and had many more latches to play with than mine. He was playing, and a couple of seconds later I found myself sitting next to him, fascinated by the warm wooden sound.

He soon started to speak to me, and I wondered how his gentle and respectful way of talking fitted together with him sometimes randomly bumping into me with his elbow or his hands. Just after some more hints I discovered his blindness, and it seemed the more surprising then that his head and his eyes were always directed in the exact direction where someone was speaking or acting in the room... 

He noticed my interest in his instrument and let me play it, surprised by the different sound patterns and rhythms I was creating, and then started to teach me some of his melodies. He explained to me how he discovered music when he got blind as he was young, and how he works now in a workshop with more blind people building those and other instruments, like traditional rattles and guitars. He invited me and the other volunteers to come over in the next days.

So we did. They showed us not only their instruments, but also chairs and necklaces, made out of natural beads. It was very dark inside the workshop, just a little light from the open door to help us discover the place. Elisabeth, a woman who is also a teacher of „braille“, the blind language, taught us the alphabet and proposed us to teach us more soon.

The day after I came back to learn how to play the traditional guitar with Eugene. Repeating the unfamiliar  rhythms he taught me over and over was an challenging task that required all my concentration. After a while he told me to try it with eyes closed, to make sure I really got it into my musical system. Later he took me to visit the man who taught him music, the so called Bonyako. As we were walking to the village together on that busy road that has no sideway, while holding my hand he said to me „I am using your eyes now.“ 
I answered „OK" - 

But I should have replied instead:¨

„You’d better not, cause my eyes cannot see what you can see inside.

My eyes are useless compared to what you perceive when you walk up this street.        

My eyes make me a blind person because I see too much.

That is why I am the blind one.“