The Tribune

By JEFFARAH GIBSON

Tribune Features Reporter

jgibson@tribunemedia.net

ONE OF the most annoying things about living with a disability is having your abilities overlooked, said Genevieve Evans, a retired Bahamian teacher. She has intimate experience with people focusing on what she cannot do instead of focusing on what can do.

Ms Evans’ plight is common and she hopes that with enough information and awareness Bahamians will not treat disabilities as a “contagious disease”.

Ms Evans became totally blind almost 40 years ago, when a hazardous substance was thrown into her face. Doctors could do nothing to save her eye sight. At the time, Ms Evan’s was a young mother with three young children.

“After the incident I was contacted by the Salvation Army to come in and they taught me braille. They also needed a braille teacher and they asked me if I would become a teacher and I did because I had noting else to do,” she said.

A year later Ms Evans was employed with the Ministry of Education as a teacher. She then relocated to Liver Rock, Arkansas where she took up a course in teaching the visually impaired and blind rehabilitation.

She also received a teaching certificate from the College of the Bahamas. She is now retired.

As a woman with disabilities, Ms Evans said she has encountered so many challenges, particularly when she goes to various business establishments to handle personal affairs.

“Some of those challenges are the way people address me. Sometimes they speak to me as though I am deaf or mentally retarded, or sometimes they would not talk to me at all. They would talk to the person with I am with. They would ask, ‘what’s her name?’

“I have to constantly tell them no, let me handle myself. I find some of these things very annoying. I find it annoying because I can do these things for myself. I cannot do everything for myself but these are some of the things that I can do for myself. Sometimes I cannot do certain things by myself and sometimes I could, but even so I would like to try anyway to see if I can do it,” she told Tribune Health.

Ms Evans said people with disabilities have the right to live as independently as possible and to say when and where help is needed. They should be allowed to manage their own affairs as much as their abilities allow,” she said.

“One day my daughter and I entered an establishment. I went there to conduct business. The lady proceeded to ask my daughter questions about me, negating the fact that I was sitting right there. Without hesitation I replied, ‘Look I am right here, talk to me’. On a similar occasion, I visited a local bank, again, with total disregard for my presence, the teller said to the person accompanying me, ‘How much money does she want to withdraw?’ I politely answered that the account belonged to me, and not to the person travelling along with me,” she said.

These incidents have opened Ms Evan’s eyes to the urgency of public education on disabilities and the rights of the disabled.

“A disability is not a contagious disease, as so many are often treated. It is only a minor setback in one’s ability to function as independently as they would like to. Persons with disabilities desire to be treated as normally as possible. After all, we are not merely persons with disabilities, as we are commonly defined only by our disabilities—we are people first, who just happen to be living with disabilities.

“If there is something we cannot do, we will always ask for help. We are not totally independent, but we can be as independent as possible. The community should know that we want to be as totally independent as we can, and we do not want to be treated like someone who cannot do anything.

“I hope the disability legislation, enforces some kind of change,” she said.