FROM BLIND
TO BLIND a story about Marina Baarman
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FROM BLIND
TO BLIND a story about Marina Baarman
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MARINA
BAARMAN
is a finnish middle-aged woman born in Tammisaari (Eken채s in sweedish), a bilingual city from the southern province of Finland and the Uusimaa region, located in the south-west coast of the country. She has peripheral vision loss and is losing her sight over time. The disability started to affect her twenty years ago but it has not stopped her from living an exciting and adventurous life. She enjoys the challenges she encounters and teaching other blind people is one of them.
FROM BLIND TO BLIND At the age of 13 the doctor told Marina that she was going to lose her vision someday. He diagnosed peripheral vision loss. It meant that she would have a more closed field of view over time until would become blind. She was never scared about this fact. Then she was living in Helsinki with her mother and her two younger brothers. They moved to the capital when she was 6 because their father’s death. Marina met her husband and had a child (Antti) at the age of 21. While she took care of her son, she worked by importing diamonds and traveling around the world. This is how she learned to speaks english well and discovered her adventurous spirit. She dislikes when life is easy and prefers to think that there’s always something new to discover. One of her hobbies was taking long trips in a sailboat with all of her family. They spent whole summers crossing the coast of different countries such as Denmark, Germany and The Nederlands. Through research, she discovered that her ancestors were sailors from Denmark. They arrived in Finland a long time ago after sailing in a boat.
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At the age of 30, Marina had another child named Milla who is currently 23 years old. Marina started to lose her vision when Milla was born. Doctors told Marina that vision loss may have been related to her hormones at the time she gave birth to her daughter. She attended the Helsinki School for Blind people to learn about how to manage with peripheral vision loss. It was there that she discovered her interest in physiotherapy. She acquired the skills to become a teacher of athletics and physiotherapy in a High School for professional athletes in Helsinki. This was her career for thirteen years. She taught young people from the ages of 15 to 20. She found her job very rewarding because she enjoyed following the progress of her students. However, she always felt that her dream job was working with other blind people. “Teaching them how to be a physiotherapist would be perfect”, she says.
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Patrícia Gallego
IN
1997
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Marina competed in the World Championship of blind people sailing. This competition was in Portsmouth, England. This city is located on the south coast where sailing and yatching are very popular. Participants of the competition practised sailing in groups: two blind and two guides. The guides were not allowed to paddle in the sailboat, they could only direct the blind people. Marina’s group won the bronze medal and she was one of only three women in the competition. After winning her medal, she stopped competing and began sailing just for fun. “Winning the prize was a personal achievement. It was great to take part in an activity I could do despite my blindness”.
Marina is currently living alone in a comfortable flat in the city of Lahti, 100 km from Helsinki. Her children are living with their own partners in Helsinki. Antti is married to a bulgarian woman and Milla is engaged to a finnish man. “I’ve spent almost all my life taking care of my brothers, my children and my mother”, she says. “Now that they live on their own, I have more time to do the things I couldn’t do before”. However, Marina does enjoy spending time with her family. Milla grew up while her mother was going blind, she understands Marina better than most people. Marina’s main activiy is to search methods to help blind people to manage themselves. She preffers working with her laptop at home better than working at her office. One of the reasons is the special attachments she has in her laptop. Using speakers to read the texts is very helpful.
There is a group of people working with Marina. They make video calls in order to share information before publishing their books and articles. They are from all over the country and they meet face to face sometimes. Once a year they go to Iris, the Central Association of Blind people in Finland located in Helsinki to learn first aid skills. Iris is a good place to meet, because they have a wide variety of help. There are sounds in each main door, sounds in the elevator, tactile maps and so on.
FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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Patrícia Gallego
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THE
REASON
why Marina decided to move to Lahti was because she got a job in a special center for disabled people. She had the chance to work teaching them in the swimming pool and she accepted this challenge. Knowing that were some blind students was one of the main reasons that made her accept the job. She works every tuesday from 17 to 20 since three and half years ago. Tuesday are one of Marina’s favorite days. She gets to the swimming pool full of enthusiasm and motivation. She likes to walk there because is not so far away from her home
and it is healthy and pleasant. It was not so difficult for her feeling like at home when she came to live in Lahti. She easily feels comfortable everywhere, so two weeks were enough to know the city. “Blind people use so much the sense of hearing to know where they are”, she tells. “I can know that I’m crossing a tunnel when I hear less noise than before”. She tells that mathematics are also really important, as she uses them to count the streets and get wherever she whants to go Marina doesn’t use any kind of stick yet but sometimes she needs it if it’s too dark or she’s walking in a unknown place.
FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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Patrícia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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THERE ARE
two groups attending her classes every tuesday. The first group start the class at 17 but they meet fifteen minutes before in the entrance of the building. There is a place where they can sit and relax. Marina is talkative and openminded, so they have a pleasant atmosphere before getting ready to go into the swimingpool.
From 18 to 19 everybody is allowed to use the swimmingpool to swim free. There is always somebody swimming while talks with Marina about everything. The second group comes at 19 and finnish the class at 20. The groups are mixed. There are men and women alike and it’s possible to find different kind of disabilities. Some of them are blind and they have different kind of blindness as well. PatrĂcia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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Patrícia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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THE
MAIN
difference between people that can see and the blind people in the swimming pool is that the blind feel quite lost if they don’t have any kind of reference. They dislike to be in the middle of the water withouth knowing where they are, and they need some support, so they feel really confidente near Marina and they hold the railing or the wall with their hands.
If they are close to Marina is also because they use the sense of hearing to get her explanations. She has to be clear just with the use of the words, because they are not capable to see how she shows the new movements they are going to practise. They have different kind of tools they use to make different movements. Marina helps them to get the tools making a soft sound with it in the wall. Then they can hear the sound and know where it is. PatrĂcia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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Patrícia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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Patrícia Gallego
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AS
MARINA,
her students are full of energy and positivism. They love going to the swimmingpool because they have a really good time while they are taking care of themselfs. It’s so important for them doing some kind of exercise every week, in order to maintain their balance and activate their muscles. That’s sometimes difficult for the blind people, like when they fall. Falling can be more painful for a blind than for somebody that can see perfectly. All of them have some dream, but they know that they also lost some things with the blindness. One of them ensures that would like to write and publishing a book despite his blindness because he likes so much the literature. Another one says, while he laughs, that it’s a pitty not be capable to be the world championship of Formula 1.
FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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Patrícia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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Patrícia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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THERE IS
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always help and solidarity in the classes. The blind people help each other to enter and going out of the pool. There is even some people that has extra help, because Marina and the partners are not enough for them. There is one blind woman, for example, that is also a little bit deaf, so needs the help from her husband. He also swims, and he tells his wife what Marina is telling. There is also a man that needs constant attention, because he suffered an accident some years ago, and he currently have paralysis. PatrĂcia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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Patrícia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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IN
HER
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free time, Marina likes practising sports. Flamenco is her passion, so she attends bailatino classes every friday. She also likes going to concerts and exhibitions of Flamenco. On thursday, she attends aerobic classes. All of this activities help her to push out her feelings. She also likes finding new challenges. In fact, she is thinking about openning a restaurant in Helsinki with blind workers. “Why not?”, she says. “Everything is possible if you believe in it”.
Patrícia Gallego
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FROM BLIND TO BLIND
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THANKS TO
Joan Roig, the coordinator of my project in Spain, and Jarmo Knuutila, the teacher of Documentary photography realized in Lahti . They helped me so much, specially Jarmo, who has followed the progress of my work week by week. I am also grateful to Heikki Saaros and Anu Akkanen, from Institute of Design, who gave me the contact of different blind people associations. Thanks to Bo Wang and Sampsa Helimäki, who were contacting the associations with me. Sampsa was the main translator between finnish people and me. Thanks also to my classmates in Lahti: Jukka Ovaskainen, Jenni Holma, Santeri Sarkola, Heikki Kaski, Aleksi Koski, Justus Kontiola, Lina Jelanski, Maria Gallen-Kallela and Aapo Huhta. All of them gave me some critics every week that helped me to improve my work. I am also grateful to Eva Fortuño, Petras Navickas, Dann Forrester, Raimonda Zabityté, Larissa Becker, Laure Bongibault, Maureen Loïs, Elodie Arnauduc, Berta Escalas, Samuel López, Silvia Marin and the rest of my friends from Mukkula. Some of them helped me with the graphic design. Others helped me checking misspeling of my english and others were always giving me support. Thanks to my family and friends from Barcelona and special thanks to Marina Baarman. Withouth her, anything of this project would have been possible.
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Patrícia Gallego