Debbie Jacob
RAQUEL RODRIGUEZ sits in the gallery of her Couva home and talks about plans to complete her degree in pre-medicine at the College of Science Technology and Applied Arts of TT (COSTAATT).
Stylish, large sunglasses, a gift from her husband Mark, cover her eyes.
“He always liked buying sunglasses for me,” she says.
Once, sunglasses were a fashion statement. Now, she says, “I wear them to protect my eyes and my family. I don’t want them to feel distressed when they look at me.”
Rodriguez, 42, has been blind for the last two years. Darkness came out of the blue on September 10, 2022 when she took a break from preparing extra lessons in human and social biology for her students. A relative had come to visit, and neighbours had congregated in the front yard.
“Something told me, ‘Don’t go outside,’ but I didn’t want everyone to feel bad that I didn’t greet them,” said Rodriguez.
She was playing with a child when a car pulled up and a man inside the car began shooting into the crowd.
“My eye veered left, and I saw a guy tapping the side of a long gun that had stuck.”
Realising she was shot, Rodriguez thought “'Oh my God, this is death. Father, Lord, take me.’ I heard a loud, strong voice echoing and it said, ‘No, you’re not going to die. I want you to do two things: humble yourself and focus on me.’”
Time stood still. She heard her husband voice as she fell backwards and lost consciousness.
Church-going people from her neighbourhood in Barataria congregated at the hospital to pray for Rodriguez. Her husband tied three water bottles on a string he secured to the bed so she could reach water whenever she wanted.
The bullet had entered above her left eye, travelled diagonally through her face and broke her right cheekbone when it exited.
[caption id="attachment_1133564" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Raquel Rodriguez[/caption]
“My face was swollen like a balloon so doctors couldn’t stitch up my cheek. My mother rubbed wonder-of-the-world leaves on my face and had me drink some she boiled. The swelling went down the next day.”
Rodriguez said she never felt any pain from her injuries.
“I just had a slight headache,” she says. “It felt like a curtain came down over my eyes.”
Lying in the hospital with bandages on her eyes she asked herself, “‘Why did this happen?’ I was a charitable person. The area where I lived was underprivileged, and I gave free lessons. The people in the community knew me.”
On the fourth day after the shooting, Rodriguez walked out of the hospital. She could only see pitch black. She knew she would never see again.
“I told myself, ‘The creator still has me here.’”
During a symposium at the TT Blind Welfare Association (TTBWA) Rodriguez met executive officer Kenneth Suratt.
“I didn’t know a community of blind people existed. He said I could relearn everything, and that motivated me.”
Rodriguez learned methods for the visually impaired to navigate the web, write e-mails, use a cellphone and “watch” movies by using the visually impaired captions that
