Last Wednesday I started going blind.
I was seated at this exact spot writing when I noticed an unusual itchiness in my right eye. So I did what everyone does in these situations. I scratched my right eye. And then, in the interest of balance, I scratched my left eye. And then I scratched my right eye again.
Half an hour later the itchiness gave way to scratchiness. The discomfort grew with each passing minute. Another half an hour later the scratchiness had been replaced by a sharp pain inside my right eye — like someone had left a shaving razor inside my eyelid. Still, I didn’t give it too much thought. My only intervention was asking my child minder to inspect my eye for any foreign objects that might be lodged there on the grounds of her ostensibly extensive qualifications in the ophthalmology field. Staring inside the boss’s eye not being part of her job description, she peered into my eye for 0.1 seconds before giving me a clean bill of health.
It is only when I was driving down the R21 towards the airport thirty minutes later that I discovered that there was a serious problem with my eyes. By the time my wife emerged from the domestic arrivals tunnel at OR Tambo, the eyelashes in my right eye were entangled and glued together by some adhesive secretion. Tears were rolling down both eyes and I was yelping like a little mutt. My wife quickly drove me to the nearest hospital.
As I sat there in the passenger seat it became apparent to me that I was going blind. Fast. So I panicked. The East Rand dusk had taken on dark and blurry connotations as it swam inside my one open eye. At this point I’m not sure whether my eyes were involuntarily discharging tears or whether I was sobbing. I started thinking about life as a visually-impaired person. In those few minutes I made an inventory of all the wondrous sights I have witnessed that I would never see again.
My wife’s face. The look of wonder in my kids’ faces when I perform my “magic” tricks with a R5 coin. The sun rising over the Indian Ocean while I’m standing on the pier on Durban’s North Beach. The majestic view of the Valley of a Thousand Hills from the gardens of the Rob Roy Hotel. The Johannesburg skyline from the M2 East, just past the Rissik Street off ramp. Anka’s Kitchen in Spruitview. God’s Window, Pilgrims Rest and all the breathtaking sights that Mpumalanga has to offer. St Peter’s Square, Rome. The Last Drop tavern in Edinburgh, Grassmarket. The Eiffel Tower. A lazy, late afternoon crowd milling around London’s Covent Gardens. The tiny bubbles swimming up the amber-coloured contents of a sunbathed Castle draught mug at the gardens of Mikes Kitchen, Parktown. But most of all, the keyboard I’m typing on right now.
And then I thought about all the sights I meant to see that I probably would never get to see. The Statue of Liberty. The lights of the New York City skyline reflected in the Hudson River at 9pm. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Ghana Castle. The scoreboard at Anfield during a Liverpool-Manchester United game. The 2017 headline, “Poverty all but eradicated in SA”. Aaron Mokoena holding the Fifa World Cup trophy aloft at Soccer City. The view of the Rio de Janeiro streets from the balcony of the Pestana Rio Atlantica during the Carnival.
It was a deeply emotional moment. I wondered how long it would take me to learn Braille so as to revive my writing career. I’m such a visual creature — would I remember all the sights I have taken in. I pondered the significance of the Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Slade line in Scent of a Woman; “I’m in the dark here!” It was the first time ever in my life that I truly gave serious thought to the plight of the blind. Paradoxically, it was an eye-opening experience.
As it turns out, I’m really just a big scaredy-cat wuss. I only had a severe case of conjunctivitis. I don’t know whether it was the viral, bacterial or allergenic kind. The god with a stethoscope who attended to me at the Sunward Hospital wasn’t sufficiently moved to let me in on the deep mysteries of my eye infection. I’m just happy that I can see and that this is the status quo for the foreseeable future. But this experience has made me realise that life is short.
Does anyone need to send someone on an urgent errand to New York?
silwanekanjila@gmail.com
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