Visit to a school for the blind opens eyes.
Caitlin Delaney wasn’t born blind, but the 20-year-old recently learned what it’s like for those who are. For 24 hours, Delaney and nearly three-dozen other teenagers and young adults experienced total darkness.
Her group visited the Asian Aid School for the Blind near Bobbili in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh as part of a mission trip for young people run by Maranatha Volunteers International, which constructs Seventh-day Adventist churches and schools around the world.
After helping to repair a local hospital, the group arrived at the school to discover they would wear blindfolds for most of their stay. Delaney said she was waiting for the punchline.
“I was standing there just waiting for him [the project coordinator] to be like, ‘Ha, ha. This is a joke. Just kidding.’ And he wasn’t,” she explained. “So we all put on these blindfolds that make it look completely black. So we started our experience here at the school without being able to see our surroundings or the children or anything that we were doing.”
Just like the students at the school. The only difference was that the volunteers would remove their blindfolds in 24 hours and return to life as usual. The blind students would never have that opportunity.
According to statistics from the Blind Foundation in India, more than 13 million blind people—or one-third of the world’s blind population—live in India. Two million are children, and only 5 percent receive any education.
Asian Aid, a supporting ministry of the Adventist Church, opened the school in 2004 with 100 students. Enrollment has since doubled. All tuition and boarding fees are funded by individual sponsorships through Asian Aid.
The volunteers had gone to the school to play with and pray for the students but they didn’t think they would not be able to see the children. Project coordinator Steve Case said, “As it dawned on the people, there was a combination of, ‘Oh boy, this will be exciting,’ and, ‘Oh no, you can’t be serious. I can’t go through with this.’ But for the most part people decided to go for it. And so from that point on, we couldn’t see anything. We were blind.”
Delaney said she kept reminding herself that she would get to take off the blindfold in a few hours.
“I really got frustrated with not being able to do things,” she said. “They tried to show me how to use Braille or write my name, and I couldn’t grasp the concept. I was like, ‘Well, as soon as I am able to take off my blindfold, I will really be able to see what I am doing and what they are saying.’ But then I think about them, and they don’t have that option.”
Volunteer Bob Werle said the exercise made everything new. “Even going to the bathroom is a new experience. Brushing your teeth is a new experience. Eating is a new experience. Everything that I do daily has become a challenge.”
“I was not expecting that our own senses would be heightened so quickly,” added Case, explaining that the sense of smell, touch, taste and hearing is elevated when sight is removed.
To help the volunteers find their way around campus, each one was paired with a student from the school who acted as a personal guide. Together, they explored the school, learning about Braille and how to operate a computer without sight.
“I think that the blindfold broke the barrier for me getting to know them,” Delaney said. “I was comfortable with them touching me because I was getting to know them in the same way. And I think that really helped because I wasn’t looking at their physical appearance or wondering what they were thinking. I was kind of going through the same experience.”
Case said they visited Asian Aid School for the Blind to help the blind students but the lesson they received was one in faith.
“So the primary spiritual lesson we were hoping for in this experience is, without being able to see, can we trust that this school exists, that these students exist, that the food exists that we ate with our hands?” Case asked. “Can we actually believe that that is true even though we can’t see it? If that’s possible, then we can have faith and trust God, who we cannot see with our eyes right now, but we can feel, smell and hear in different ways.”
