Eveline Angonwi - leader of the Cameroon National Committee of Women with Visual Impairments.
Eveline has a way of drawing people in. She talks very quietly and quickly, and in such an unassuming way that it’s easy to miss the power of her words and the strength of her feeling.
We meet her at home in Cameroon’s capital of Yaoundé where Eveline leads a group of 30 women with visual impairments who live across the city.
Eveline wishes she could have more members but finds that very few women with disabilities have the resources to leave their homes.
“Women with disabilities have a very low income base, some have no income at” she says.
“Many are obliged to go with men without protecting themselves and are forced into sexual activity that they don’t want” she says. “Often [they are] left to raise children alone.” Eveline believes that it is this poverty which leads to more with women disabilities testing positive for HIV.[1]
With the support of international charity Sightsavers, Eveline campaigns with her local group and runs occupational training workshops to teach women with visual impairments how to generate an income.
Today’s workshop focusses on making cocoa butter from raw beans bought from a local market. The butter can be used in cosmetics and cooking and any cocoa powder left from the process can be used in hot drinks.
It’s a popular item. Eveline says for every 11540 XAF (£15) spent on the materials, a woman can sell it for around 50 XAF (£40).
These workshops also provide an opportunity for women to build their confidence and make friends.
Today’s group is run by Marie Marguerite, 49, who is also blind and has been teaching people to make cocoa butter since 2014.
“I really hope that these women can make money out of the training because they, like I am, are vulnerable as we are visually impaired. We don’t want to stay with our arms crossed – stay at home and do nothing because of our impairment - we need to be able to sustain our lives and our children.”
People are always very surprised that people with visual impairment can do these sorts of things, they think it is impossible that we could make cocoa butter.”
To people who assume that, I would simply say that they should not underestimate us because we are people with great capacity and we have the potential to do lots of different things and given a chance we can contribute a lot to society.”
More about Eveline
Evelyn lost her sight very suddenly when she was celebrating International Women’s day nine years ago.
“Here it’s a big feast” she says. “Women go feasting and drinking it up. So that day I was unfortunately to take this glass of whisky that did much damage to my sight.”
Cameroon’s government banned the production and sale of whisky sold in sachets and canisters in 2016 after it emerged that this popular and more affordable drink sometimes contained methanol[2], a type of alcohol that is used to create fuel and antifreeze.[3] This can cause irreversible blindness within hours or days after ingestion. [4]
Eveline is unsure whether it was this that caused her blindness or whether it was because the hospital she was taken to initially misdiagnosed her with malaria and gave her a shot of glucose which had a bad effect on her diabetes.
The impact that blindness had on Eveline’s life was almost immediate. Once her employers realised that she was not to regain her sight they stopped returning her calls and she was left without income. Her long-term partner left her, and her children became ashamed to be seen with her in public with her white cane and distanced themselves.
Due to the loss of support and income, Eveline had to make huge financial sacrifices until she was able to turn things around for herself and move into the flat that she currently lives in with her sister.
She describes this “devastating” episode of her life as a kind of awakening.
“I don’t want to say I like my condition but I would say that I have learnt much and I think that I am a better person now then I used to be. I am much more courageous…” she says.
“I saw how my life changed from what it used to be to almost miserable” she pauses. “So I came to understand what the other women were going through and I saw, that when we came together, it was better for us to be together.”
“We shared our problems and our difficulties we encouraged each other and somehow it led us to want us to bear our problems.”
Eveline now lives a happy, comfortable life after her long struggle to overcome the barriers that society put in her way. She is determined to give more women with disabilities the opportunity to do the same.
“In our community when someone wants to brag about being an expert an expert in a domain he will say “I can do these things with my eyes closed.”
Our eyes are closed and yet we do things well. So we are the experts!”
Despite all difficulties and barriers faced because of her condition she fells a stronger person. "Thanks to Sightsavers and other partners I did a lot of workshops and trainings, I build my capacity, I met important people, without having this disability I would not have met you. The people I met added to whom I uses to be. I am a stronger person in the sense that I have a stronger mentality, those things that would make some people panic no longer make me panic, because I am a stronger person now, I can deal with very difficult situations. I am not saying blindness its a good thing, I face daily challenges as a blind person but, I have an other way of seeing things, my perspective is different".
×