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Eudalie Wickham-Ashby. (Pictures by Xtra Photography.)

During March, the Month Of The Disabled, the Wednesday Woman column will focus on people with disabilities.

EUDALIE Wickham-Ashby has very low vision but defies long odds to live a full life.

She works with the Ministry of Social Care helping people living in poverty to sort out documents that are important for daily living, volunteers with the Barbados National Organisation of the Disabled (BARNOD) and is a wife, mother and grandmother.

She does all that even though she has retinitis pigmentosa, familiarly known as night blindness, an inherited condition of the retina that leads to a gradual progressive reduction in vision.

She started noticing the symptoms when she was about 12 years old.

What I have found is that a lot of black persons in the Caribbean have the condition, Wickham-Ashby said.

Mine started when while I was at school. I would notice that when I moved from the sunlight into the classroom or hall I would take an unusually long time for my eyes to adjust. I also had difficulty seeing at night.

Over time her condition worsened and whereas before she could see faces and the finer details, now she just sees an outline of someones head. The person would have to come very close for her to make out anything else.

I am still able to walk the streets, take the bus and do a lot of the basic functions, she said.

Wickham-Ashby works with the ministrys ISEE (Identification, Stabilisation, Enablement and Empowerment) Bridge programme which helps poor and vulnerable persons to work through seven pillars listed as obtaining personal identification, human resource development, health conditions, family dynamics, employment, income and social benefits. Each individual has minimum conditions to obtain, such as getting a birth certificate, national identification card or NIS card.

A friend of mine told me about the ISEE Bridge programme and I did the training and I attended the one-week training back in 2014 and then in 2015 they were seeking persons to work with the ISEE Bridge programme here and I submitted my curriculum vitae and was called up for an interview, Wickham-Ashby said.

Grandchildren Jattarri (left), Jevid and Jaheim Wickham (in arms) with their grandmother Eudalie Wickham-Ashby.

Going into the interview I had a lot of ambivalent feelings, she acknowledged, adding that some questions focused on how she would be able to perform her duties with a visual impairment.

I highlighted that every day I live doing some of the basic tasks and functions that any person has to do so where I am not physically able to see something I am able to use my other senses particularly my sense of hearing and intuition.

I think going into the interview I was able to let them see that, yes, there will be some challenges but there is alwaysa way around it.

She said her two years in the job have been fantastic.

A lot of people underestimate the significance of a person working and earning their own income, she said. It is not just about the finances yes, that is important, but the whole interaction with colleagues and having some worth. You are really respected and people take your information and realise that it is not nonsense, that you are knowledgeable unlike what some people think about the disabled that once you have a disability you are stupid.

Being able to contribute to the development of my country is something that I value.

When she was fresh out of school, Wickham-Ashby said she initially wanted to be a journalist but was dissuaded from pursuing those studies. That advice later angered her, especially when hearing disability rights activist Carson Small on the radio.

It was Small who first invited her to a BARNOD meeting in 1989 and she has been involved ever since, even serving the organisation as its president.

The fire started burning because when I attended that meeting I realised that I have been very fortunate to have attended the regular schools, but when I listened to the experiences of persons who were younger than me sharing how their parents held them back because they have a disability and how persons within the educational system treated them, I knew I had to work with advocating around disability issues, she said.

Wickham-Ashby expects greater opportunities in the future and one of her big hopes is for self-driving cars to reach the market so she can buy or hire one.

Read more:
WEDNESDAY WOMAN: Night blindness no barrier - Nation News

This entry was posted on March 9, 2017 at 1:42 am and is filed under Blindness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |