Ray of hope for blind students

Ed Maina a Students of Kilimani Primary school at the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust Africa fundraising campaign dubbed #myvision campaign at a city hotel in Nairobi. This was on 24/06/2016. PHOTO BY DAVID GICHURU

Little Ed Maina lived a normal life before his life was plunged into darkness. One day while in school, he fell ill, and this was to become the norm.

At first, doctors could not tell what was wrong with the then eight-year-old boy. Several tests and visits to different hospitals indicated that Ed (pictured) had meningitis. The condition took such a toll on him that he eventually became blind.

Ed, now 10 years old, was thrust into a new world devoid of the colour he was used to at home and in school. Since then, he has had to learn how to live with his new condition.

Now in Class Two, the boy had to find a school that caters for the visually handicapped. “I can write notes, do mathematics and I use the abacus when counting,” he says.

Blindness for school going children in Kenya is an expensive affair.

And that is why the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust Africa (KBTA) launched a campaign — #MyVision — during a fund raiser last week.

The campaign seeks to raise funds to partially fill the current gap of 800 braille machines at a cost of Sh80,000 each, in order to realise the desired 1 to 1 ratio of machine-to-child. “The current ratio of braille machine to child is 1 to 3; this poses a great challenge to their access and quality of education,” says Paul Polman, Unilever’s Global CEO and President of KBTA.

A visually impaired child needs the braille to write and read. And it does not come cheap. One machine costs about Sh80,000. The stark contrast with the Sh10 a child with eyesight has to spend to buy a pencil is huge.

In addition, braille text takes up an enormous amount of space. According to the Catholic News Agency, a complete Braille Bible is  made up of a stack of at least 40 large volumes, weighing about 40 kilogrammes and approximately two metres high.

Printing a full braille Bible is about 50 times more than the cost of printing a standard Bible. This means that even the text books blind children use come in multiple volumes.

For example, the typical Primary Mathematics Book Five for a pupil with sight costs approximately Sh500. For the blind child, the same book would come in five volumes, each volume going for about Sh700. This scenario is replicated across every subject.

“The government gives us Sh3,000 per child per year under the Free Primary Education programme,” says Clara Rono, co-ordinator of the Nairobi Integrated Education Programme for the Visually Impaired.

This is just Sh2,000 above the customary Sh1,000 usually given under the programme. The amount is hardly enough to buy one braille text book. Needless to say, few parents are able to afford this, so they rely heavily on well-wishers.

Normally, one braille machine is used by three children. Statistics on the available resources paint a gloomy picture—45,000 children in Kenya live with visual impairment, but only 7,000 have access to quality education, according to the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust Africa (KBTA). For instance, blind pupils at Kilimani Primary School (a regular school that runs an integrated programme for deaf-blind children) have to report to school much earlier than their peers to do homework or tackle it before going home, says Ms Rono who operates from the school.

This is because the learners cannot carry the bulky machines home — they are extremely delicate and weigh six kilogrammes. To make it worse, the equipment breaks down constantly and only a handful of people in the country know how to repair it.

“It is usually inconveniencing when the machine is damaged because you cannot do anything until it is fixed,” says June Dezinavell, a visually-impaired Standard Five pupil at the school.

The KBTA has trained 170 field technicians in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in braille repair and maintenance.

So far, donation and subsequent distribution of 650 braille machines to schools and provision of more than 35 tonnes of good quality braille paper in the East African region has been done, says its Chief Executive.

 “We would like to bridge that gap because every visually impaired child has a right to basic education and an equal learning opportunity where they can fully exploit their potential, bringing their dreams to life,” says Mr Polman.