How Oysters & Pearls-Uganda Sponsorship Changed a Blind Student’s Dream
Fingers flying over the letters of his laptop in typing speed, Basil Onen, is undeniably more keyboardinated than many sighted people.
But of course, many didn’t ever imagine that Basil would one day be able to use a computer. Not even Basil himself, who, having been born blind, spent his first 10 years at home, as his two siblings and every other child in the neighborhood went to school.
“If there is a part of my life I would want to cut away, then it is my childhood,” he stated, emphasizing how “particularly excruciating” it was.
Basil is the first born to “ordinary country parents.” To them, the thought of educating a child with visual impairment was not only “alien but also impossible.”
Being the only child born with visual impairment in the village made life more difficult. “Besides being alone in my condition, I felt lonely. Watching pupils do their homework would always wrack my heart,” Basil stated.
The Uganda Society for Disabled Children (USDC) estimates that one third of all children out of school in Uganda are children with disabilities. Despite the government’s emphasis on inclusion of all children, enrollment of children with disabilities in schools remains low. Consequently, the percentage of Persons with Disability, PWDs, who are literate is only 55 percent, compared to 75 percent of persons without disabilities, according to the 2014 census report of Uganda.
The high illiteracy rate among the PWDs explains the economic hardships they constantly endure, as they are mostly unemployable, and often lack the capital and ability to start their own income generating projects.
So, as a child, Basil concluded that he would as well be financially miserable.
But his imagination changed when, at the age of 10, a community based worker met his father and said even at that age, Basil could start studying in a blind inclusive primary school.
“I was the oldest pupil when I started primary one,” he said.
The age issue aside, relying on sighted kids for access to academic resources and mobility and everything else was the most intimidating. It depleted his evident energy to finally study like any other kid; couldn’t contribute much to classroom process and “was surely a burden.”
“I always wanted to become a lawyer because it was every kid’s thing
“I worked hard, and with some scrappy grade, I made it to high school.”
But high school was the “magical moment” that became the second chapter of Basil’s life. Despite going to an inclusive school still, the school had a difference.
“It is there where I first made contact with a computer. Almost immediately, I recognized that the computer was the missing magical bullet to quicken my evolution into the person I had been imagining,” he stated.
The computer excited Basil. He became very passionate about studies. Learning how to access text materials like any other sighted person through a screen reading software, navigating the web and communicating with sighted people through typed communications, to him, “was miraculous.” It was also the moment he came into contact with Oysters & Pearls- Uganda, the organization he now works for.
“O&P-UG supplied the school with computers and ICT infrastructure for the visually impaired.” As an early master of the computer, Basil earned pocket money training other students as a Peer Teacher. He is now a JAWS-Certified instructor.
“I became far more contributive in class and sort of flipped my reality upside down. The sighted kids started valuing me, and sometimes depending on me, because I had access to the printed books in our Library & Technology Center built by O&P-UG; most others, including the sighted didn’t have any print books,” he recounted.
Since its inception in 2010, Oysters & Pearls-Uganda has trained more than 90 blind and visually impaired learners in blind inclusive schools across Uganda, and skilled dozens of community members with computer and braille knowledge.
Basil graduated from of high school as the best student in his class that year. At college, he attained the grades and passed the required exam and qualified for the Law course which he so much wanted; he decided to study Social Works instead.
“I decided to be part of the force pushing to unlock the potential of other people like me, altering their realities and handing them the full powers of choice.”
Basil is now a software developer, employed by Oysters & Pearls-Uganda to code websites and teach others who wish to learn this skill. He is fully committed to making technology more inclusive and accessible.
“It is certainly refreshing, far more refreshing I think, than if I was eating money and speaking for people in front of the jury,” he said.
With access to technology, Basil says he can try anything else his heart drifts to. “Because I can access just about anything and study anything using computer technology.”
