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The Blind
Leading The Blind
Have
you ever stopped to think just what it must be like to be blind?
In Fiji there are still
people who laugh at the blind. There are
those who have no pity for people with physical handicaps.
Stop for a minute, close
your eyes. Try to walk to the door. It's not easy is it? Imagine.
Some people live in that world every day.
In Paris the public is
being given the
chance to find out what it's like to be blind. The Paris
Videothèque
has attempted to recreate the world as it is experienced by blind
people: a circuit in which the blind are the guides and those
temporarily deprived of their sight become the handicapped.
"Dark/Noir" as the
project is called also
aims to show how the other senses - touch, hearing, smell and taste -
acquire more acuity when the eyes become redundant. Visitors go
through a curtain into the "kingdom of darkness".
The blackness is total;
similar to an underground cave when the lights go out, nothing can be
distinguished. A voice welcomes the small group tempted by the
experience of "dialogue
in the dark," an idea devised by Andreas Heinecke of the Frankfurt
Foundation for the Blind.
The guide's name is
Gilles. He is blind, and it is his job to reassure and help those
who find it difficult to
cope. Anxiety and surprise are constant without the eyes to warn
of
what is coming. The visitor makes unsteady progress using a stick
in
one hand to scan the ground ahead for bumps while using the other to
feel for larger obstacles and try to identify the object he has
collided with. Many who have been round the circuit said they
were
continually afraid of falling into the void.
When sight is lost,
touch and hearing are
mobilized to compensate. In the garden it is the bird song that
captures the attention or the babbling sound of a stream nearby.
Sounds gain in intensity in the all-encompassing darkness.
The circuit begins in
the garden. The
visitors shuffle, trip and bang into each other, clutch at things
around them, suddenly realizing they are holding somebody else.
After a mumbled "sorry" they turn away only to hit another
person. Or
was it a tree?
Gilles takes his charges
into a room where
he says there are sculptures. Visitors examine them probing and
stroking the shapes, slightly embarrassed at the thought of what they
might be caressing.
Next comes a street
recreated for real
with the roar of traffic and noises coming from all sides. "This
is only a quiet street believe me," says Gilles.
For the non-initiated
the cacophony of vehicle engines, road works and jet aircraft overhead
seems an odd sort
of tranquility. What a really busy street must sound like defies
the imagination.
To get over their
fright, visitors are
taken into a "cafe" complete with all the noises of glasses chinking
and chatter. At the bar counter they order drinks from a blind
barmaid. The final test is paying and being able to recognize the
coins and count the change.
The Videothèque
also offers "dinners in
the darkness" where diners often have difficulty recognizing what they
are eating, or short music concerts and braille reading sessions all in
the dark.
Not surprisingly, it is
much easier to concentrate on what is being performed.
Towards the end of the
tour, Gilles, who is 28, explains that he lost his sight gradually as a
result of
disease. "Two years ago" I realized one day that I could no
longer see
at all," he said. Gilles was critical of those with sight saying
they
made no effort to understand the problems of blind people.
Now the visitors can
distinguish a faint
glow that grows stronger as they make for the exit. When they
emerge into the sunlight, they see Gilles for the first time with his
dark
glasses and white stick.
"Goodbye," he says,
before returning into the world of darkness.
From
The Fiji Times
1994
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Copyright
© 2006, Jace Carlton. All International Rights Reserved.
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