If you ever lost courage, if you ever sunk in a pit of despair and wondered if hope is all but a mirage, Emelyne Uwineza could tell you what working with challenges can yield.

The 22-year-old first born of four children became blind at the age of 7. 

Uwineza’s family was poor and her parents illiterate. Her father retired from the military due to a severe injury sustained from the war in 1990s. She has never got to know what happened to her sight.

"One evening, I went to bed without any problem and I woke up blind in an entirely different world where everything was dark. I could not see anymore. I was blind, just like that,” Uwineza says.

She did not have a chance to be taken to be examined by a specialist as soon as possible, instead her parents believed she was bewitched and started applying whatever they thought would cure her, in vain.

Having been helped by a French aid worker, Nicole Branche, she pursued her primary school certificate. After the French died, she was left to a Rwandan woman (blind too) who helped transfer her to another French organisation, Fondation Liliane, to help her with school materials. 

From Gatagara School in Southern Province to Gatagara in Eastern Province, Uwineza received a High School Certificate in English, French and Swahili.

She is expected to start her university studies.

However, the preparations are hard and Uwineza wishes it should be much more facilitated for people of disabilities.

From the time she was told by an ophthalmologist that she could not be cured, Uwineza got inspired to be a medical doctor.

Undying medicine-related dream

However, with her impairment, it has been apparent to her that pursuing medical studies would be almost impractical. Yet she has never given up her dream to be useful to others. 

It got more interesting when, after she completing high school studies last year, Uwineza was informed about a physio-therapeutic professional centre in Kigali. Without hesitating, she thought that was a very useful bridge to her life’s dream of helping other people to feel better.

Uwineza wrote to the mayor of her home district, Musanze, requesting for support and the district accepted to pay her tuition and living stipend.

She travelled to Kigali to adapt to life in the city. She is undertaking a one-year physiotherapeutic massage course. 

Like Dr Mary Bates, a psychologist, wrote in The Journal of Science, "If one sense is lost, the areas of the brain normally devoted to handling that sensory information do not go unused — they get rewired and put to work processing other senses.”

Uwineza shares the same belief, saying when "my organisational skills and other senses developed much, I got a very high sense of touching and feeling the proximity and remembering. In addition, I can cook, I can wash my clothes, clean the house, etc.”

Famous talented musicians who have lost their sight at early age, such as Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, also present examples of how becoming blind can heighten remaining senses. 

For Uwineza, the ultimate nightmare of living in Kigali is "crossing the road when you are blind.” She sometimes spends up to five minutes at a zebra-crossing as few motorists respect the road sign that caters for pedestrians crossing busy streets.

"People with cars or motorcycles do not care. It is luck when there is traffic jam and they are not speeding, otherwise I can spend some good time trying to cross,” she says. 

Uwineza calls on motorists to be mindful of the rights of other road users.

‘Girl of great courage’

Jacques Buhigiro, a trainer of Uwineza with 46 years experience in physiotherapy, describes the student and other trainees with disabilities as "better in class more than their normal colleagues.”

He says the biggest problem is how normal people think they can do better but it ends in words only.

Buhigiro also believes visually-impaired people have particularly taught him how to be patient and courageous.

"Emelyne specifically is a girl with the most courage I have ever trained. She will be a great success. She has great dreams and you look at the courage and compassion she has, no matter how blind she is, and you say ‘why should I whine?’” the physiotherapist said.

Marceline Gato, Uwineza’s classmate, describes her as a brave girl who is never stopped by challenges but always works toward her goal.

Lesson and mystery of life

For a passionate visually-impaired, Uwineza can never stop thanking the people who have always helped her in everyday life. She says the biggest lesson of life she ever learnt is that "no one can succeed by themselves.”

On the other hand, her biggest mystery is how the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi was made possible. 

"I was told that I was born at the evening of the beginning of that tragedy. But it is the mystery of my life, how people turned to their neighbours and killed them,” Uwineza says.

She urges Rwandans to restore "broken peace and love” for better future of Rwanda and world.

Uwineza’s happiest moral treatment she has ever got is when someone tells her that she looks nice, courageous, well-dressed. She says. "I feel like I am considered as human as others.” 

Uwineza’s all-time shock is never about her visual impairment, rather the stereotype around people with such disability and mostly girls. It doesn’t even apply to visually-impaired men. 

She shares the story of how a man tried to coax her into sexual intercourse and when she refused, the man pressed her to accept because of an erroneous, horrific and sexist stereotype that "having sex with blind women cures HIV.”

According to Uwineza, these are some of the ways men take advantage of women with disabilities, like her.

She calls on all rights activists to support her "stop violence against visually-impaired women” campaign and raise awareness among men about rights of women with visual impairment.

Request

Uwineza’s wish is to shake hands with President Kagame to thank him for what he has done to ease the situation of the disabled persons in the country.

However, she has a twofold request to the President. First, "If I ever have a chance to meet him, I would ask for help to go and study physiotherapy abroad so that I can be able to come back and start a modern physiotherapy (massage) centre where I can contribute to the wellbeing of other Rwandans,” she wishes.

Secondly, she says she would request the President to invite all visually-impaired people in the country for dinner so that they can show their gratitude to him.

She says this would make them much more appreciated. 

Uwineza says if she had microphone to speak to the whole world she would tell all people "to show care to the weak and vulnerable.”

She believes that if the world valued more people with disabilities it would be a much better place to live in. 

"The world should know that the job of the disabled people is not that of begging. We are humans like others and we can work the way others do,” Uwineza says.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw