I have begun interviews for an awareness-raising project on persons with disabilities in Zambia. It will involve around 20 small black-and-white posters photocopied in the thousands and distributed around Lusaka and Zambia – at hospitals, churches, government buildings, NGOs, and so on. Each poster will express the voice of a single disabled person: "MY VOICE as a person with a disability."More on the project later. For now, here is an excerpt from one of my interviews. Peter Chibesa Bwale (pictured above) lost his sight at 14 and now, at 28, teaches computers and Braille to other blind people. He is also an active musician and actor. The following is his word-for-word reply to my question, what would you like other Zambians to know about persons with disabilities, through this project? I used a voice recorder, and the text is unedited.
To the people out there, disability is not inability.
Disability comes next after a human being.
When I was born, I was not born a disability.
I was born a child, and then you noticed a disability after I was born.
Who is blind? If you look at me and only see blindness when I am a human being?
Don’t handle me like a liability.
Don’t interpret my rights by replacing them with charity.
Give me what is mine rightly.
Let me not fight for it, for it is mine.
Don’t underrate me or my abilities.
Give me what I need for me to succeed.
Teach me how to fish.
I do not want to be given fish, for tomorrow is for those who prepare for it.
Thank you.
5 comments:
Jesus, that's poetic. He needs to rise up to be a spokesperson for PWD. Go through my references in LM08 (I imagine Bob will bring a hundred copies back from Geneva) and I have a few different names and organizations (gov and non-gov) that I interviewed for my research... maybe there's a link there between this gentleman's ability to convey the issues and advocate... I do however remember what a joke the PWD government services were, so you may not get far with them alone.
I find myself the typing version of speechless.
Truly.
Kristin, I'll definitely see about promoting Peter as a spokesperson. He's an incredibly gifted person – the poem you read was word-for-word what he said in an interview, no modifications. I've been having much better luck with non-govt advocates, and I think Peter is well-suited to work with some of them. He's already active to some degree, for example working with his good friend and albino pop star John Chiti – who I will interview for my project!
Jaclyn, I hear ya, he said it all.
Lou is this for your job or something you are doing on the side? I am really interested to hear more - who started this up and what you are doing on it? Sounds amazing. That guy sounds amazing. I am always struggling with labels with this at my work - disabled, special needs, challenged ....... all have such negativity attached to them. Are you dealing with this too?
Meg, this project came out of a suggestion by my supervisor to profile disabled people in Zambia, but it has strayed far from his vague suggestion. Bob's been away for much of my internship anyway, leaving me all by my lonesome. The advocacy/awareness focus actually came from meetings I had with disabled activists on what they thought would be most useful, considering my lack of time/money.
It's been rewarding to finally get interviewing – I just came back from interviewing one of Zambia's most famous singers, an albino man named John Chiti. As for issues about naming of disabled people, I've addressed them as much as I could, but it's tough. During every interview, I encourage participants to critique the project and give their input. This is how the project title changed from "Voices of Disability" to "MY VOICE as a person with a disability". One participant thought the first title defined the people involved by their disabilities, or as disabilities, rather than as human beings who have disabilities.
I've found working with disabled people educational and eye-opening. Seeing their enthusiasm when given the chance to 'speak to the Zambian people' is something else. I now feel even more pressure to make the project come together and promote the flyers as best I can. I'll keep you posted on how things go!
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