Saturday, 25 January 2014

Dialogue In The Dark

Hello!

Whee I'm back haha! I know its been a while :/ Sorry, It's just been really busy in school work and everything. 

But in today's post, I wanted to tell you guys about our Learning Journey to Ngee Ann Polytechnic for an activity called 'Dialogue In the Dark'.

This is definitely something to remember and you will know why in this blogpost.

I never thought much of this activity when we were told about it. Well, we weren't told much about it from my teachers. They just told us the name of the activity and thats it. They sure as hell did not tell us that we would be in total darkness for a whole hour with nothing but a walking cane and a tour guide named Jason.

I had an idea about what it was about. There was an activity during my P5 camp that had the same concept. We were blindfolded and were assigned an animal call. We had to find people that were the same 'animal' and drag them around until the whistle was blown.
Of course there wasn't any dragging or animal calls in this activity but we were very much blind.

We started off with getting into groups of 8- Brinda, Karisha, Lisa, Yvette, Wynnifred, Lauren, Kyra and me. Then, they led us to this 'prep room' where they gave us the walking cane and told us to take off our glasses. After which, they led us into the room where it was clear that this was no joke.

The light slowly faded away along with our vision. It was pitch black and literally(I'm not even exaggerating it), we could see nothing at all. 
Let's just say I was freaking out because you know even though I have been kinda through the same thing before, it was a blindfold. Your sub-conscious mind will be all 'its okay you can just take the blindfold off and you'll be fine.' but noooo this time, no matter how hard you strain your eyes to try to see, all you 'see' in black nothingness. 

We were then introduced to our tour guide, Jason. I think all of us was curious as to how they are able to see us or direct us in the dark so Brinda just asked whether he was able to see us. Turns out, he's blind. I think there was a little change in atmosphere when he told us that he was visually impaired. But I think we just got back to being scared of the dark again.

I am so paranoid of whats in the dark and I just can't stand not having light. I even have to have my night light on when I go to sleep. I wasn't dealing very well with the whole blindness thing at first. I was having difficulty breathing and I just felt so enclosed and I was just grasping on to Brinda for my dear life because I was so afraid I was going to get lost somewhere in that dark room and no one would be able to find me. I started crying actually but I told myself to get my shit together so I did. Yay me xD

We were all against the wall, so afraid to venture into the darkness with no turning back. But Jason told us to leave the wall and walk towards his voice. I hesitated but went ahead anyways. I decided to put some faith into the organisers that made this activity and into Jason and my friends. They wouldn't include anything in the course that would potentially hurt us. So, I went ahead and let fate take charge haha.

I remember we were first on carpet flooring. Then, there was gravel under our feet. On our left we realised were real plants after feeling them and plucking their leaves. Poor plants. The wall felt like it was made out of those bamboo boards. We continued walking, occasionally bumping into each other and getting entangled in each other's legs and walking canes. 
Jason told us that there was a bridge upfront. And when we stepped on it, I could literally imagine what it looked like. At some points, I thought there was light and I could see again. But we were all screaming and screaming because I never ever liked those rocky bridges that moved along with the shivering of your feet. Thank god it wasn't too long off a bridge. We had some difficulty finding the bench Jason told us to sit on. I don't even know what we were sitting on before. 

We continued walking and clinging on to the wall and grabbing anything we could find to guide the way. The thought and feeling of being alone in there was terrifying so I always had to touch the shoulder or arm of the person in front of me. I had to know she was there to continue. 

The list of the bazaar things we did in the dark continued. We took a 'boat' and learnt how to know which direction we were going from the wind. We even felt bicycles and cars and guessed the car's colour. It was yellow by the way. I also pressed the traffic light button and we crossed the road together. 

The highlight of the whole activity was when we bought food from the cafe. Yes, no joke, we were still in complete darkness. The lady at the counter introduced herself as the 'cafe guy' which I found very amusing. And then she went through the menu by saying it out to us. I couldn't remember half of the drinks she mentioned but I ordered an ice cream anyways. I knew I only had $2 notes in my pocket so I pulled one out and handed it to her. She then confirmed that it was the right amount and thanked me.
We located the couch and all of us sat together in front of a small rectangular coffee table which I imagined to be white and from IKEA. I was fumbling around with the ice cream and had no idea how to open it so I just asked Kyra to give me a hand. The ice cream was delish. 

While we were eating, Jason placed a small bin on the table for us as I heard him tell us. He asked us whether we had any questions for him. I had way too many.

I learnt that Jason has been blind since 2006 due to a medical condition. He said he was scared and confused with being blind at first but got used to it. He got around by memory and just lived by trial and error. He was not married and had no kids. He's turning 35. The lady aka the 'cafe guy' was also visually impaired so she had skills we didn't to know the exact amount of money we were handing her. There were a total 15 visually impaired people working for the Dialogue in the Dark activity. There are a total of 4000 registered visually impaired people in Singapore alone. We asked him how he knew what time of the day it was and he told us about a special watch he had where he could feel the direction the needles were pointing. He promised to let us see it when we got out.

Soon, we were following the left wall again. Slowly yet surely, the light from the outside shone through and we could see again. Never had I been so happy and grateful to be able to see. Everything seemed more beautiful than it used to.

It felt like I had just awoken after a very very long nap. However, the realisation of the fact that there's no such thing as escaping from this darkness for many people in this world, hit me not long after I was so dang glad to be out of there.

So yes, another thing to add to the list of 'the things I'm grateful for'. And I couldn't be more thankful to have gotten this opportunity to truly see what it was like to be blind.

As for seeing Jason, we actually never did and probably never will. What's left of him is his reassuring voice and imagination of what he looks like.

If you guys ever get the opportunity to go for any activity like this one, please do go. And if you do go and in the middle of it you get afraid and feel like giving up like I did, don't. Push through because    you will get to see the light again. And I definitely would've regretted it if I had decided to opt out for it like I had wanted in the beginning.

So yeup, that is it for this blogpost :))
Thanks for reading! TTYL!

Signing off...
CLL

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