Far beyond what is seen

One of the greatest things of this experience in the US is that I have made some friends for life. One of these friends is Lisa, from South Africa. Lisa is also a psychologist and we’ve met because Fulbright sponsors us both.

But before talking about Lisa, let me tell you a little story.

Since I was young, I have always worried about physical disabilities, especially not being able to walk, hear or see. All of them scared me a lot, but I used to think that being blind was the worst because of all the limitations that it implies.

Well, my friend Lisa is blind. And Lisa knows no limits.

Lisa traveled from South Africa to the US with her husband, Pieter, and her wonderful guide dog, Baggy. Pieter stayed only for a week and then left. He came just to show her the city and to make sure that she knew how to go to places all by herself. Baggy stayed.

In one of those funny life coincidences, we’ve met exactly on the day Pieter left. Lisa was a little worried so I offered to walk her and Baggy to the bus stop. We’ve become instant friends and, as curious as I am, I started to make a lot of questions: When did you lose your sight? How was it? How do you know which bill you have to take to pay for something? Is it better to walk with a guide dog or with a white cane? How do you know where you are and where do you have to go? A lot of questions. She laughed and answered all of them. She lost her sight when she was around 19. It was of course very difficult, but she learned how to live with it. In the US the bills are all of the same size, so she has an app that tells her which bill she is holding. Then she developed a folding system to keep the bills in her wallet and know if they were 1, 5, 10, or 50s, for example. The guide dog versus white cane question was pretty easy to answer: besides being a great (and handsome!) companion, Baggy is able to deviates from obstacles, so it gives her more confidence to walk on the streets. As of how she knew where she was and where she had to go, she told me that Pieter made her memorize every street of the city. Honestly, I don’t believe it… My theory is that Lisa has a built-in GPS.

Serious! Once we were leaving a restaurant and I asked her: “are you going to the left or to the right?” and she said “to the left, what about you?”. I said that I wasn’t sure and picked up my phone to check the map. She laughed and asked where I was going. I answered and she immediately replied: “oh, you’re also going to the left, come with me and I’ll show you where you have to go”. We laughed a lot, what a humiliation…

There was also one funny day when we went to a Japanese restaurant. Apparently the chef liked to created different kinds of sushi, and we didn’t have the option to choose, so we had no idea of what to expect. When the dishes finally came, Lisa asked me to describe the sushis. In Portuguese it would have been difficult, in English was impossible. My descriptions were something like: “well, there’s rice, maybe some kind of fish and something red and weird, kind of viscous, on the top of it… just eat”.  It wasn’t very helpful, I admit, but we had lots of fun.

Lisa stayed in the US for four months and I learned a lot from her.

She wanted to go to NY before Christmas so that she could “see the lights” and she managed to do it. She traveled to Disney World. She explored New Haven. She made friends.

Lisa is the bravest person that I’ve ever known. She taught me that our limits are all inside us and that it’s up to each person to decide what to do with them. She showed me that even when you’re scared, if you conquer your fear, you can go as far as you want. And most of all she taught me that the important is not to see, but to feel.

Thank you, Lisa. I miss you a lot.