Deaf and blind

Imagine having lived most of your life thinking that you are cursed and that God gave you a raw deal, only to realise that this was not true and a lie from the devil. That feeling is quite liberating and that’s my aim as I write for this column. So please keep those emails coming in.

Today we look at a woman who has met every U.S. President from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain. She has had streets named after her in Switzerland, Spain, Israel, Portugal and France. A stamp was issued in 1980 by the United States Postal Service to mark her birth.

On October 7, 2009, a bronze statue of this amazing woman was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection, and is displayed in the United States Capitol Visitor Centre. The statue is the first one of a person with a disability and is permanently displayed at the U.S. Capitol. This woman has written 12 books and several published articles, having written her first piece when she was only 11 years old. I am talking of course about Helen Keller.

She was born on June 27, 1880, in northwest Alabama. Her father was a retired confederate army captain and editor of the local newspaper; her mother was an educated young woman from Memphis. When Helen was 19 months old, she was afflicted by an unknown illness, possibly scarlet fever or meningitis, which left her deaf and blind.

She was extremely intelligent and tried to understand her surroundings through touch, smell and taste. However, she began to realize that her family members spoke to one another with their mouths instead of using signs as she did. Feeling their moving lips, she flew into a rage when she was unable to join in the conversation. By the age of six, Helen later wrote in her autobiography, “The need of some means of communication became so urgent that these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly.”

Anne Sullivan came to to be Helen’s teacher in 1887. Later Helen called this day her "soul's birthday." Perkins Institute of the Blind had been wise to choose the strong-willed Sullivan, for few young women would have persevered through the tempestuous first weeks of the relationship. Helen hit, pinched, and kicked her teacher and knocked out one of her teeth. Sullivan finally gained control by moving with the girl into a small cottage on the Keller’s property. Through patience and firm consistency, she finally won the child’s heart and trust, a vital step before Helen's education could proceed.

Sullivan started with the techniques developed by Samuel Gridley Howe when she worked with Laura Bridgman 50 years earlier. She finger spelled the names of familiar objects into her student’s hand. However, Sullivan innovated by incorporating Helen’s favourite activities and her love of the natural world into the lessons. Helen enjoyed this “finger play,” but she didn’t understand until the famous moment when Sullivan spelled “w-a-t-e-r” while pumping water over her hand. Keller later wrote:

“Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! … Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life”.

Many people believe that Keller’s love of language, her great articulateness and grace as a writer and public speaker were built upon this foundation. In May of 1888, Sullivan brought Helen to Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, where a new world of friendship began, “I joined the little blind children in their work and play, and talked continually. I was delighted to find that nearly all of my new friends could spell with their fingers. Oh, what happiness! To talk freely with other children,” she later wrote.

In 1891, Helen wrote a story she called “The Frost King” as a birthday gift for Perkins director Michael Anagnos. Delighted, he published it in the Perkins alumni magazine. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She maintained a correspondence with the Austrian philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was one of the first to discover her literary talent.

Determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned to speak, and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures. She learned to "hear" people's speech by reading their lips with her hands—her sense of touch had become extremely subtle. She became proficient at using braille and reading sign language with her hands as well. Shortly before World War I, with the assistance of the Zoellner Quartet she determined that by placing her fingertips on a resonant table top she could experience music played close by.

Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She was a suffragist, a pacifist, an opponent of Woodrow Wilson, a radical socialist and a birth control supporter. In 1915 she and George Kessler founded the Helen Keller International Organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In 1920 she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union. Keller travelled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips to Japan and becoming a favourite of the Japanese people.

Throughout her life, Helen Keller devoted her energies to humanitarian pursuits, advocating for economic justice and the rights of women and of people with disabilities. Keller asserted her right “to feel at home in the great world” and through her eloquence and tireless activism, she fought for the same right on behalf of all people.

Her tripe disabilities of blindness, deafness and a severe speech impediment could have been seen as raw deal from Mother Nature defeated her from the onset. But she discovered her purpose in her so-called affliction. All the people we have featured in this column have one thing in common; they discovered their purpose in their so called disability. At the apex of their lives it dawned on them that the disability was not a disability at all, but rather God’s catalyst to their greatness. Till next week, DISCOVER YOUR PURPOSE!

Lynell Dangarembizi is the Founder and Executive Director of Rare Diamond Foundation, an organisation established to help “Disabled People Discover Their God Given Purpose In Life” he can be contacted at lynelltd@ymail.com