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Living And Leading With Confidence
Kenneth Suratt
Kenneth Suratt was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad in 1968 with congenital cataracts . As a child , he had low vision . Attending school in the 1960 ’ s , he devised a strategy that allowed him to capture what was written by the teachers on the chalk board . He sat really close to the front of the class and whatever he could not see on the chalkboard , his friends would read it out to him . When he was eight years old , his teacher informed his parents about the severity of his condition and advised that his eyes should get tested . Kenneth did not think that was necessary because the only hindrance he perceived at that time was simply his inability to copy what was written on the chalkboard in class and , with his friends , he had found a way to make that work ! However , his parents took him to the ophthalmologist and based on the extent of the low vision diagnosis , he was sent to the School for Blind Children on the island .
He was just eight years old when he was admitted to this institution that housed and
taught children who were blind and had low vision . He describes this as one of the most traumatic experiences of his life , remembering quite vividly the day his mother dropped him off at the boarding school . While he was playing with his new-found friends , she quickly slipped away to lessen the trauma of the separation . Kenneth then saw his family only three times per year when school was on vacation . When he was 13 years old , as part of an integrated program to have children from the School for Blind Children included in main stream education , Kenneth started attending Queen ’ s Royal College high school . While there , at the age of 14 , he completely lost his sight .
Kenneth remembers waking up one morning seeing a range of different colours at the corner of his eyes . Within one week , the colours looked ‘ broken ’. He was diagnosed with retinal detachment . Kenneth travelled to Miami and England hoping surgery could be performed to correct the situation , but nothing could be done so he returned to Trinidad , blind and emotionally broken . For a while , he pretended he was still able to see and continued interacting with his friends at the integrated high school as best he could , bumping into things as he went along . Used to him being of low vision , this was initially not startling to his friends , but they eventually realized that he was now totally blind . This realization that others now knew of his blindness sharply jolted him into his new reality . He could not cope , was scared to move around and the school had no one to counsel him – the best counselling he received was from his friends . He was not familiar with braille , as he previously had a system with his friends that allowed him to read / see sufficiently well with their help . He now had to readjust , learn braille and figure out how to live from then onwards as a blind person .