In the Land of the Blind the One Eyed Man is King

The summer was wearing on without any visible signs of a hot season - in fact one of my work colleagues remarked that it had been the coldest hot season in many a year.

I was happy enough as I was busy with lots of little projects, the most exciting of which was a project to implement an internet exchange point in Rwanda. I was doing a lot of the project management and it brought me around people, more than my usual work. It seemed I had very little else in my life other than work, when that went well and was plentiful I was ok, when it wasn't I was in crisis. I somehow hoped for something more in my time here, but it seemed none of the locals were particularly interested (or interesting it has to be said) and the other volunteers seem nonplussed about my presence or absence... at times I really missed some good conversations. This is why I had a desperate need to keep busy, to stop thinking about how lonely I was. Luckily a few weeks ago I sought out the head of the National Information Technology Authority and threw myself at his mercy. One of my colleagues had mentioned that he had no staff of his own. He needed help, I needed work - it sounded like a match made in heaven - and indeed it was...

Ever since then I have been treated like some kind of expert, which I find rather strange as I don't know much about anything. In fact that only I do know is how to have opinions, and express them… Although perhaps in a highly hierarchical society this is enough! I have started to do all kinds of jobs that I would never even be considered for back home. But I know it’s not real, it’s a case of being partially sighted....(cf the title of this article)

All talk of disability this brings to mind a little anecdote from the early days in Rwanda:
While coming near the end of our in country training, me and Liez decided to treat ourselves to garlic butter and lemon perch fillets at a local restaurant. It was a superb meal and one after which I felt the need to walk it off. While on the road back to the hotel we heard some decent music coming from a little bar. As this is quite a rarity in bars in Rwanda, meaning having music at all in a bar, be it decent or otherwise, we decided to check it out. They were playing songs by a Ugandan musician, famous in the region, called Chameleon. Liez knew him as he was married to a Belgian women she had made friends with while working in Uganda. In fact Liez has the dubious honour of being mentioned in one of Uganda's tabloids called "Red Pepper". This publication makes News of the World look like the Catholic Times, it’s even banned in Rwanda - but that's another story.

Soon we were sipping a beer and fending off requests from very drunk locals to dance. Liez escaped to ask for one of her favourite tracks to be played. While requesting the song, she got talking to a guy at the bar. I didn't notice until he went to leave that he was on crutches. The remnants of the genocide are everywhere here with the number of people you see going around with no eyes or with various limbs missing, but this guy appeared to have something else wrong with him which impeded his walking, something genetic or muscular perhaps. As he was leaving he approached our table and after greeting me, he said:
"Can you answer me one question? Why, when people can dance, why they stay sitting?"

A good question and one particularly hard to answer when coming from a man who looked like had spent most of his life disabled.

"Self-consciousness? Lack of confidence?", I offered
"Pah!", he made a dismissive motion with his hand.
"If only I could borrow working legs for two weeks, that's what I would do - I would dance".

I wonder if, like many others, I am still finding my legs...so many things I probably could do, if only I believed I was capable.