CAMAGÜEY.- The fact that a person is deaf and blind does not mean that has completely lost these perceptions; most people keep them although a little bit and it allows them to develop like any other mortal. Therefore, if you see Yaimi Rodríguez Ramírez passing through the street, you do not imagine she is one of the 64 that has that impairment in Camagüey.

On the occasion of celebrating on June 27th the International Day of deaf-blind persons, we talked to her and her mother Mirelys Ramírez Pérez, as always at her side, about her day to day.

They told us that 15 days oafter birth, the little girl suffered a generalized infection of the digestive tract, she had had meconium, plus a high dose of Kanamycin left her a severe hearing loss. “However thanks to that, she was saved, but then she became a deaf person”, the mother hastens to say.

Then, at the age of five, she was found to have been born with retinitis pigmentosa. The girl attended primary school in the special education, where she finished the ninth grade.

At age 15, the gift came as a cochlear implant. “A very expensive operation. We therefore had to travel to Havana many times and then staying there for three months of rehabilitation, at the International Health Center Las Praderas, at no cost; and we owe that to the Commander-in-Chief, he was father of that program and to the Revolution because none of this would have been possible in another country”.–How did you feel the day of the awakening of the implant?, Mirelys translates into signs.

–It was a very special time, I was happy because I could hear everything around me, and I cried my eyes out.

“The implant was a success, everyone went crazy behind her to call her, because she had to be touched, and then everything changed, she was able to pass her course as a teaching assistant, a position she was also asigned from Havana, and undertook work. Now she can also hear her child. But when the implant is removed...she is someone else!”.

For 10 years, Yaima was educator at the special school for children with sensory disabilities Antonio Suárez Domínguez, she worked there with children with hearing loss. “I used to get such a kick looking after them, helping them with a snack, organizing activities for them, those were great years, I really liked my work”.

But lack of vision and balance, that affected her the most, she was taken to get full analysis from a doctor, by the need for being looked after and to be ok for parenting her four year old child.

“He talks like a parrot, but he understands her quite well via sign language; his dad, who is deaf too, taught it to him. And she takes care of everything about him, she is very clean and fussy about the house”, the grandmother says, she feels how much her daughter misses the job outside.

I was only visiting her for some minutes, I believe this housewife thing is something circumstantial and Yaima will be giving more of herself for society shortly, perhaps in a work closer to home or right there, because there is too much spirit and youth. Meanwhile, her mother and the rest of the family, as so far, will always be alongside her.