Philippa’s presentation in Guatemala

My name is Philippa and I am 20 years old. I was born blind, with no eyes in my sockets so I wear plastic eyes. This  came as a great shock to my family. My parents couldn’t understand how I could be born blind when all their other children had no problems. For a long time they wondered why God had let this happen.

I have four sisters and two brothers who are all older than me. I am an Auntie eighteen times and a Great-Aunt three times.   Right from the start and in spite of their shock at my eye condition my parents made sure I was included in everything my family did. My brothers and sisters treated me exactly the same as they treated each other, except for the fact they looked out for me perhaps more than they looked out for anyone else. I joined in all their games, even sliding down the stairs in a sleeping bag, and doing head stands and rollie pollies. I even used to ride a bike up and down our long driveway. I didn’t often crash, because I would listen to the way sound bounces off things like walls or cars, and realise they were there and avoid them.

Drop the Baby

Being an Aunt so many times, I am very used to babies and young children. I remember always holding and looking after the babies and playing with the older kids. Once when I was holding one of my baby nephews, someone said to my mum in horrified tones “you can’t let her hold that baby, she’ll drop it!” My mum was quick to inform them that I had never dropped a baby in my life and was perfectly safe with them. I know that if I ever became a mother, my large family will have given me enough practice to be able to look after my children properly, just as any sighted person could do.  My Mum and Dad have taught me to cook, so I now make dinner for them sometimes.

Sent away

Despite the Opinion of the education authorities that I should be sent away to school, my parents didn’t want this so fought to keep me in mainstream school, and I first attended the local playgroup and later the village school. In school I was supported by a team from a branch of the Child Development Centre, SSICD (Service for Sensory Impairment and Communication Difficulties). Members of this team were with me in the classroom at all times, teaching me to read Braille at the same time the other children were learning to read print at age 5, helping me with PE and every other classroom activity. If we were working on any worksheets or reading books, these would be given to the team in advanced so they could prepair the work in Braille for me. If it couldn’t be brailled in time, they would sit beside me and read the worksheet so I could still do the work. This was the same for anything that was written up on the blackboard.

At this stage I was using a Perkins Brailler. This is a manual brailler and was very heavy and quite noisy. I used to produce my work in Braille, and my support worker would over write it in print for the teacher to read.

At the age of 6 I began to learn to touch type.  At that time I couldn’t see the point in it but after a while I began to enjoy it. The computer was equipped with a piece of software which talked, so that each letter I pressed was spoken. It was a very basic version of what I would use later on in life.

I really enjoyed things like art at school, especially working with clay or salt dough. I even tried my hand at painting. The paint was mixed with glue to thicken it, then other things such as sawdust, wool or sand, so that every colour had a different texture, and so I would know where I had painted. There was also special plastic film which was placed on a calk mat and when drawn on with a biro produced a raised line, making the diagram tactile.

As I moved through Middle to Upper schools, the work got more intensive and my use of assistive technology increased. By the time I was doing my GCSEs and A Levels, I used a braille note taker, which is like a computer in itself but very compact and with a tactile braille display instead of a screen. I also had a laptop containing a screen reader, which reproduced anything that was written on the screen into audio.

I was still using hard copies of braille books and worksheets. There is a great difficulty getting text books and study guides in Braille. As text books change every year and braille is expensive and  time consuming to produce, and also bulky to store, not many text books are produced. So it fell to my team of support workers to get the text books from the teachers, and either braille relevant passages from the book depending on what we were doing in the lesson, or in some cases braille the whole thing. We were given an office in my upper school, so that all this work could be done without disturbance. This was brilliant, as it meant that I could go there for any free periods and have access to all the equipment I would need, and because I had somewhere to do my exams separate from everybody else. I had to be kept separate because I had to have 100% extra time for any exam such as English that required reading, so a two hour test paper for everyone else would turn into four hours for me.

French and Music in Braille

For things such as French and music, there was a whole different braille code to learn and remember, so that extra time was really needed.

I have been constantly amazed what a varied reaction people have to me. Some teachers were only too pleased to welcome me into their classroom, and to do what ever they could to adapt the lessons for me. For example some would make sure that they handed information to the team well in advance of the lesson so it could be brailled or explained to me, and some of them would even send the support workers away, and help me in the class themselves, e.g. anything my English teacher wrote on the board, he would say out loud what he was writing so I could follow. This meant I could work totally independently. I also had a brilliant art teacher, who made materials such as clay available all the time so I could take part in art in my own way. I even used modrock (plaster cast). So although I can’t see, I managed to do GCSE art. The art lessons were almost like a therapy for me-very relaxing because I could produce what I wanted in the topic and not worry about having to read anything.

I have always been quite a slow reader because I always preferred audio books to reading braille for pleasure.

No effort

Other teachers however, had a completely different approach. The maths teacher in my last school was terified of me. If he saw me in a corridor he would run the other way, and would never talk to me about my maths work. Also my biology teacher would never give the team work to be prepared in advance. This meant I couldn’t do the work properly and certainly not independently. This frustrated me so much that when she gave me a 3 for effort on my mid-term report, I couldn’t help saying “if you don’t put the effort in to getting the work prepared in advance, how do you expect me to put the effort into the lessons?” although she said she took my point, it didn’t have any effect on her in the slightest.

To move around school I used a white cane. I have to hold the cane in front of me and sweep it from side to side, so that it hits any obstacles that are in my way. The children at school thought it was like a weapon, because if they didn’t move fast enough or I didn’t know they were standing there I would accidently clip them round the ankles. The students had an assembly to tell them about me when I first got there, and they were told  to hold doors open if they could, and to say hello in the corridors so I would know who they were.

Welcomed at church

My family have always attended church. Right from the start I was welcomed into church like any other child. The pastor’s wife went with my mum and dad to Braille classes so they could all help me out. My parents helped me with my reading, and Mrs Evers brailled things for my Sunday school lessons and later on hymns for church worship. I also went round their house for tea a lot. This meant I got to know them very well.

I went to Sunday school with my brothers and sisters, and quite a lot of the stories would be brought alive for me by making something that was relevant to it such as a pair of cut-out feet for the story of the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her tears.

I can’t really say when I became a Christian, but I have always known that God is there from a very young age I prayed to him to help and forgive me. I was 12 when I decided to make my faith public by baptism. Since then, I have been so grateful for the fact that God never ever changes. He is the one constant thing in an ever changing world. He will always be there for me, and will never let me down, and through all the moves through school I had to make, and decisions I had to take, through people leaving or changing jobs or even changes round the house, I clung to the fact that he never changes. And although there have been many times when I have slid away from him, God has always bought me back to where I should be.

College of Music

I really enjoyed singing the choruses too. I have always enjoyed singing and have been asked to sing at christmas concerts etc for as long as I can remember. I took singing lessons at Upper school for 1 year then moved on to take singing, piano and trombone lessons at Junior Trinity college of music for 3 years.

New battle

When I left school 2 years ago I couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief. I really felt it was time to move on from education and fight a new battle, so I didn’t go to college. I set about looking for interviews via the Job centre, but for a long time I went to interviews and had no job offers. I was even told by one place where I went to do some volunteer work that I would be a risk to their health and safety. I got very despondent and was on the point of giving up when out of the blue I received a phone call from my uncle who runs Peacocks Auction Centre in Bedford. He said he needed someone on his switchboard to answer general enquiries such as “when do you open?” etc. He asked me if I thought I could do the job. I had had 6 months work experience on the school switchboard, so I said I would come and give it a try. I have been there ever since, and have been able to expand my job to typing up the lots for sales. The computer system has been adapted so that the screen reader Jaws can work with it, and I also have a 80 cell braille display attached to the computer so that when I am on the phone I can read the information the customer is asking rather than having two voices speaking at once (the customer and jaws). I have a headset for the phone, so that I can hear the phone in 1 ear and the computer in the other, and sometimes the dictation machine in one ear and the computer in the other. This was all paid for by a scheme called Access to Work, who also pay my taxi fairs to and from Peacocks. But it only worked out because the Lord sent me to an employer who was willing to make the adaptations for me. I really enjoy my job and thank God for it. I am still only working 2 days a week, but that is enough for me.

Although I find being blind very hard at times, when there is something I wish I could see like a new baby, or when I wish I could drive, but most of the time I know that although I will never see in this world, I will see when I get to heaven. The first thing I will ever see is my saviour’s face. And he is perfection. What more could I ask? There is a hymn I love to sing which sums this up. “and I shall see him face to face, and tell the story saved by grace”. I cannot wait till the day when those words will come true.

I want to thank God for everyone in my life who has made it possible for me to live it to the full. My parents, my family, the teachers who helped me, my singing teachers, my employers, friends, and the uncle who took me driving when I was 17. They have all been such great blessings to me.

Driving a car

I remember being extremely annoyed that I would never be able to drive when I turned 17 as my friends could, and complaining to my uncle dave about it. So he took me into a field and sat me at a wheel of a 4 wheeled drive, and directed me as I drove slowly round the field. We did manage to miss the fish pond, just. I think he had a lot of faith to sit beside me in a car which I was driving. He also took me on a jet-ski recently and he helped prove that most things are possible if people are willing to help you try.