A split sec­ond was all it took for Raquel Ro­driguez’s life to be plunged in­to dark­ness and for­ev­er changed. Al­most two years ago, a stray bul­let to the head had the 42-year-old fight­ing for her life and los­ing her sight in the process.

De­spite los­ing her abil­i­ty to see, Ro­driguez nev­er lost her vi­sion for life.

“It was to­tal­ly a hit, a shock. Some­thing that I think I might not even get over it be­cause be­ing some­one who was to­tal­ly sight­ed, and now I am to­tal­ly blind, I see on­ly dark­ness, whether it’s day or night. It’s on­ly be­cause I prob­a­bly have faith in the Almighty, that gives me that strength.”

The moth­er of three said the in­ci­dent was jolt­ing and in­evitably changed the course of her life.

Rec­ol­lect­ing the trag­ic in­ci­dent with a pained ex­pres­sion Ro­driguez said, “I could dis­tinct­ly re­mem­ber it, it was Sep­tem­ber 10, 2022. So that’s about a year and eight months ago, I was just prepar­ing my class­room at home to teach adult re­peaters for CXC.”

She re­vealed what be­gan as a nor­mal day, quick­ly turned sour with­in her close-knit com­mu­ni­ty in Sixth Av­enue, Ma­lik, Barataria. She re­called play­ing with a neigh­bour’s six-month-old ba­by when sud­den­ly every­thing went down­hill.

“I heard loud ex­plo­sions. I just froze like this, with my left hand to my head.”

Ro­driguez ex­plained that when she was shot in the head, the bul­let rup­tured the ten­der tis­sues be­hind and in her eyes, in­evitably ren­der­ing her blind.

“The bul­let went through the left tem­ple here, the stray bul­let, it went di­ag­o­nal across my face and ex­it­ed, if you can see the scar there, it came out the right cheek­bone. So this eye, you can no­tice it’s kind of small­er than the oth­er.”

De­spite nev­er re­ceiv­ing clo­sure over the in­ci­dent, the for­mer teacher made peace with what hap­pened and tried to move on. How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted there are dif­fi­cul­ties one en­coun­ters when they are vi­su­al­ly im­paired.

“I’m telling you, every day is a strug­gle be­cause be­ing trans­formed, I usu­al­ly say, in­to that new blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired com­mu­ni­ty, I re­alised there is not much to spread your wings in terms of do­ing some­thing like a job or any­thing like that. So, it’s kind of hard.”

What keeps Ro­driguez go­ing strong de­spite this up­heaval in her life, was what she heard in the mo­ments fol­low­ing be­ing shot.

With a bit of hes­i­ta­tion, she re­vealed, “What I’m about to say next, you might not be­lieve it. But at that very point in time, when I re­alised I was at death’s door, I al­ways used to pray and say, Fa­ther, Lord, when I reach that stage, I want to call on you. And it ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened and I called on him and I said, Well, Fa­ther, Lord, well, I had a con­ver­sa­tion. So it’s like, time just froze on me, you know? And I had a con­ver­sa­tion with him in my head, and I ac­tu­al­ly heard a voice say­ing, ‘No, you’re not go­ing to die.’ And he gave me two in­struc­tions. He said, ‘I want you to be hum­ble.’ One. And he said, ‘I want you to fo­cus on me.’”

‘Just keep go­ing’

Those words kept her faith strong and made her per­sist, but not with­out a few bumps in the road.

“When it first hap­pened, maybe about nine months lat­er, I was very ag­i­tat­ed. I didn’t know where to turn, I couldn’t even an­swer a phone call on my cell phone. I just thought you know, life was there, that’s it for me.

“I used to dri­ve be­fore a lot ... But I learned to nav­i­gate with a cane and learn to ex­plore my en­vi­ron­ment, that’s the whole thing about it, you have to ex­plore once you’re to­tal­ly blind. So, it’s like a to­tal ad­ven­ture.”

But with the as­sis­tance of the Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ro­driguez was able to get a new lease on life, and the new dreams that came with it.

“I met a lot of peo­ple who would say, look, you know, you can still do things just as a nor­mal per­son would do, but it would on­ly be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. So, with tech­nol­o­gy now I say I got the con­fi­dence back to keep learn­ing be­cause I love to learn. And I start­ed to do dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, learn Braille. I learned the al­pha­bet by my­self with the help of my hus­band.”

All of this led to her pur­su­ing a short course that would be­come a pas­sion, a broad­cast­ing course in tele­vi­sion and me­dia.

With this taste in broad­cast­ing, Ro­driguez now as­pires to be an an­chor. And while it may be dif­fi­cult for a per­son who is blind to read the news, she said she is cer­tain that it is not im­pos­si­ble.

Through an app called JAWS, a screen read­ing soft­ware pro­gram, she can lis­ten and re­peat what she hears, mak­ing her dream of an­chor­ing one day, a pos­si­bil­i­ty.

“When I went blind, I re­alised the strength now, it left the eyes, be­cause I’m not see­ing any­thing, and it went in­to the mouth. So, I said, what can I do, and be­cause I got the knowl­edge of learn­ing the com­put­er again and dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, I can now read from the com­put­er with the help of an app called JAWS. So, it’s down­loaded on the com­put­er, and when I use the key­board, the ar­rows and I press down, it will read an en­tire sen­tence. I will then have a head­phone on my head lis­ten­ing to it read­ing and just re­peat­ing every sen­tence.”

For those who may be dif­fer­ent­ly-abled like Ro­driguez, she had one piece of ad­vice to share —pur­sue your dreams.

“It’s the same ad­vice I would give to my­self, which is, you’re still alive. And once you’re breath­ing, and you’re healthy, just keep go­ing. Keep do­ing your best. There are many things you can get in­to. Don’t just feel be­cause you’re dis­abled, you can’t do any­thing. There’s al­ways things to be done, there is be­ing your own boss, and then be­ing an en­tre­pre­neur all these things. Don’t think that it’s too hard, that moun­tain is too hard to climb, just keep go­ing, just keep go­ing. And that’s what I am do­ing, to be that ex­am­ple for oth­ers.”