Do you care?

Dr. Krameh is a young medical doctor who recently became blind. Yes totally blind! He can’t see his patients but his patients can see him. When the hunter becomes the hunted, the hunting expedition is over. Somewhere in a different city, is another young man whose plight is even worse than Krameh’s – he’s deaf and blind.    

These two men are only the latest examples of daily additions to the army of the blind and partially sighted. There are 285million of them all over the world and about 4million here among us in Nigeria – enough to populate a state such as Sokoto, Niger, Delta, Osun or Anambra. The numbers could have been nearly double had it not been for the shortened life span of blind people in the ‘hostile’ environment of Nigeria. A blind man is unlikely to live more than half of his expected number of years and a blind pre-schooler is likely to die before his 10^th birthday. 

Do you really care about the two men above and their over 4million colleagues in similar situation? Interestingly, they care about you and don’t want to be a burden on you! Most of them want empowerment, not pity; opportunities to live and make meaningful contributions to our society, not handouts. This is what Dr. Krameh said when I interviewed him several months ago, “Apart from my visual impediment, I am physically fit.  I can see myself becoming a household name as Radio-doctor, counselling troubled minds, teaching lay people, nurses, medical students and promoting and directing public health activities. I can conquer the world like my heroine, Helen Keller.”

He went on to tell me about Helen Keller. She was for a time, the most famous handicapped person in the world. A severe febrile illness when she was 19 months old left her blind, deaf and barely able to communicate. At age 6, she met Anne Sullivan who taught her the alphabets opening up the world to her. Keller later attended Radcliffe College, where she graduated with honours in 1904. “Her autobiography, The Story of My Life, is a source of inspiration for me,” said Dr. Krameh. Helen Keller later became an activist, a lecturer and an advocate for support, for not just the blind and deaf, but for women's rights. During her lifetime she was regarded as one of America's most inspirational figures. Keller's image appears on the quarter-dollar coin released in 2003 – the first U.S. coin to feature braille.

Dr. Krameh quoted profusely from Helen Keller. “Her words are captivating and motivating,” he said. He recited some of these to me word for word. I was impressed. The words keep ringing in my ears. I share them with you.   

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.”
“I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.” 

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
“Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.”
“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of [boredom].”

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
“No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.”
“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.”

At the mention of the word ‘apathy,’ I asked Krameh to stop. The word triggered something in my memory.  ‘Apathy’ is a lack of feeling or emotion or interest. It is a state of indifference or ‘siddon look.’ It is what led to the holocaust in which about 6million Jews and 5million non-Jews were murdered in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It is the reason why you are not worried when the bomb is blasting hundreds of miles away but you are suddenly jolted when a blast occurs a few miles away from you. Apathy is why Helen Keller said, “It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.”  Our own Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka said, “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” Apathy is a lack of concern or lack of care!

There is sadly apathy towards the fate of the blind. If you care, working together we can light up our world; reduce blindness in Nigeria; eliminate cataract blindness; support the training of more eye care workers and rehabilitate the blind and visually impaired.

And surely, if you care, you can do something today for Dr. Krameh. His hunting expedition may be over but his true life’s mission is yet to begin. Do you care? Do you really care?