The future is bright, but first they have to see it... ( Pt. II) THE CRYSTAL VISION project

Jumoke Balogun and I are presently running a campaign that will help a lot of blind people in the country and although ‘February 14’ (and God of course) has a lot to do with it, there’s more to the story.

Jummie (that's what we all call jumoke) was involved in a fire accident when she was only year and 11months old, and the accident left her facially scarred and partially blind. She grew up with a battered self-esteem, and concluding that she would amount to nothing in life because of her limitations, she avoided mixing up with people especially because of fear of rejection. But thank God for motivational books and autobiographies that taught jumoke a lot of things while she was growing up. Jumoke started acting out things she’d read and heard, and now Jumoke is truly one of the most beautiful people I’ve come across. Her burns are still there, but she’s confident, outgoing, intelligent, and an example of the fact that ‘true beauty comes from within’. As for her partial blindness, she had a surgery in the UK when she was 14 but still needed another - corneas are unavailable in these parts and surgery has to be carried out in the Uk, or India with one cornea costing $2000 (excluding surgery fee). Finally, in September this year, Jumoke (along with 6 others) was able to undergo surgery, right here in Lagos State, courtesy Lion’s club.

The Facts

• No matter how much money a patient has to work on his/her cornea, if there are no cornea donors, there’ll be no corneas to use.

• Africans don’t believe in cornea donation because according to them (and the re-incarnation / rebirth impression), the eyes will be needed in the next life. But the truth is that the eyes are the first part of the body that decay after death (medically proven)

• A lot of people who cannot see, are not necessarily blind. You can either be partially blind, which means that you can undergo surgery, or fully blind, which means that you can’t.

• The ultimate blind test: if a torch light is flashed before a ‘blind’ person’s eyes and he/she can see/feel a ray of light, then there’s hope. But if not, surgery cannot help.

While at the blind school – on February 14 – and taking pictures of the children, I noticed three boys who were obviously close friends and had eyes that looked pretty damaged, jerked when I took their picture.

 It was then it occurred to me that they must have felt the flash from my camera and the only explanation was that a lot of these kids pronounced blind were actually not. There’s just no awareness. Millions of us don’t even know there’s any such thing as cornea donations. I didn’t know until some months ago.
Jumoke has a degree in mass communication, anchors a show ‘What’s your excuse?’, and is engaged to be married hopefully, next year, and even with all her strength and positivity, I’m sure a lot wouldn’t have been possible if she’d been blind. Someone’s corneas helped her, and she’s going to help someone with hers because she’s donated them already. I’m picking up my ‘cornea donation’ form this week, so that when I’m gone, someone can find my corneas useful. We need to spread the word because The future is bright, but first they have to see it…
p.s: on the 11th of december, a blind school is having their convocation and lots of visitors will be attending, so we - Jummie, Nike (who was blind for 13 years but got a cornea surgery in september) and I) plan to speak at the event. first of all, we need as many people as possible to wear our awareness tees, and also help with networking (speaking to as these visitors)... will let y'all in on our plans.

xoxo

The future is bright, but first they have to see it...

Early this year, while preparing for my final exams, my friend (Jummie) and I decided to give out a few things to charity; we chose Valentine’s Day, the perfect time to share love. At first, we didn’t know how to go about it; we didn’t have access to these needy people, so we decided to give stuff to the indigenes – tailors, hawkers, and market women – around us, but somehow we just knew that these people weren’t ‘needy enough’. We’d never really done this before, and we had just two weeks to plan everything out, but God took over.


On February 14, we – Jummie, myself and about 5 very unsure volunteers – hired a cab filled with loads of clothes, and some food items, and drove to the school of the blind [in the same town]. First of all, I was surprised that we were driving hundreds of kilometers to some very dusty remote area; these children were supposed to be blind, not lepers. We eventually got there just as they were about to have lunch, and their Co-ordinator (who was expecting us) had to put that on hold, but of course they didn’t mind, they were excited to have visitors.

Jumoke spoke brilliantly, telling them how much we loved them and believed in them (not without citing examples like Cobhams etc). I told them we wanted to meet them, so they had to stand up one after the other, telling us their names, and what they hoped to become in future. Amazingly, as they shared their dreams with us, they laughed. It was almost as though they didn’t believe they could amount to anything. You really couldn’t blame them; blind children, in a blind school that had nothing; no Braille, no pianos, no fans, no electricity, no life, no HOPE whatsoever! I was sad. I’d gone in really naïve…

After presenting half of everything we brought along, we left with a promise to come back. Our next venue was a catholic-run orphanage situated within town. The contrast was a bit too obvious; neat sisters taking care of the kids, a white female who was head, well-fed orphans who strolled a few blocks [within the compound] to get to school. Everything was so organized, we were scared they’d snob our not-so-new clothes, and few food items, but thank God! It wasn’t so. The head asked us a couple of questions – who we were, why we were doing this and how we’d heard bout them – before finally opening up and saying that she really appreciated the fact that students could come together to do this. She went ahead to tell us how most of the kids were strays, and how there barely had enough support to run the place. By the time we left I was exhausted but tremendously fulfilled. Jeez! I felt like a super hero who’d just saved the entire planet, and to think that we’d done very little. It was at that point I decided I would definitely do more.


p.s; Jummie and I said big thank yous to our volunteers. They really did a good job and seemed genuinely happy to be involved in our project. After that, we both went back to my room and talked excitedly about other things we wanted to do for these blind children. My personal faves were Blessing, Monsurudeen and Kemi. Blessing simply because she was my name sake and while everyone else wanted to become either a musician or a pastor, she wanted to be a ‘journalist’ [which coincidently is what I am]. Monsurudeen on the other hand, stood and immediately he spoke, impressed us; he had that rich, very confident radio voice - Jummie and I talked about him non-stop. Kemi, was simply the youngest (and really cute too), she didn’t even seem blind. I know we haven’t gone back since then, but that’s because after wrapping up our exams and projects, everything just seemed to happen so fast. However, it’s the tail end of the year and something’s come up again. Jummie and I have just 3weeks to plan for this and we need all the support we can get.