“Imagine going to sleep at night only to wake up to find out that you can no longer see anything,” remarked Evelyne Ogolla.
Evelyne Ogolla, a Regional Social Integration Officer at the Ministry of East African Community and Regional Development, has been visually impaired for the past six years. The firstborn in the family of four siblings says her condition started with severe migraines, persistent headaches, very high blood pressure, mild sinuses, pain in the eyes and blurry vision. She was forced to undergo magnetic renounce imaging (MRI) with no her condition.
The MRI revealed that she had excess spinal cord fluid that affected her optical nerves. The doctors then advised her to undergo a procedure called tapping which helps reduce the spinal cord fluid. This did not work so well, leading to a surgery called shunting, but her condition did not change in the end.
“October 27, 2015, was the darkest day of my life, both physically and emotionally, I woke up that morning and everything was dark,” she said.
The graduand of Development Studies from Accra University narrates that her life then took a turn around at this point and she has to adjust accordingly to adapt to her new normal. She decided to quit her job at that time because she could not perform her duties anymore and had to stay home for a year.
She went through a myriad of rejections and stigmatizations from friends and family which affected her psychologically. However, in 2017, she made a move that drastically changed her life as she decided to join the Kenya Society for the Blind.
“In 2017, I decided to join Kenya Society for the Blind where I learnt how to use the brail, the assistive technology and mobility such as the white cane and there is where I met people like me and in fact people who were even worse than me. My life just changed completely and joined the Persons with Disabilities club,” she said.
After applying for so many jobs in 2019, Evelyne managed to secure two internships with the State Department for Transport and Public Works and In September 2021, she beat all odds to secure a job as the Regional Social Integration Officer.
“You can imagine the post only wanted two people and I was among the two who successfully landed the job,” she said.
Adding that the government is really trying on the 5% allocation for Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) and it through that allocation she is able to work as an intern at the state Department of Transport and Public Works.
Despite securing the job at the Ministry, she faced the challenge of not having assistive devices to facilitate accessing and inputting official documents which totally incapacitated her. But through the help of the Collaborative Centre for Gender and Development (CCGD), the Regional Integration Officer was able to acquire the assistive devices which included a laptop fitted jaws- a screen reader office duties the Digital Accessible Player Information System (DAISY) a talking book for the visually impaired persons.
She says through her work at the ministry, she purposes to change the lives of young women to be economically empowered as she believes that women are the backbone of the society and nation at large.
She urged the government to continue including PWDs in everything that concerns the nation as they have in the recent past. However, she called on women who are visually impaired to stand and speak out and knock on doors in search of help.
“Do not give up, keep pushing because nothing comes on a silver platter and do not forget to get relevant skills and perfect them,’’ she reiterated
