Two visually impaired children with big dreams

Apr 01, 2013 News

By Enid Joaquin

Shivannie Featherstone is twelve years old.
She is the only child for her mother, Suzanne Featherstone, who dotes on her.
Shivannie is visually impaired so her mother has to take her to and from school every day.
Ms. Featherstone does not work because of her daughter’s condition.
“It s a sacrifice, but I don’t mind as I want the best for Shivannie because she is very brilliant. She recently wrote the common entrance (National Grade Six Assessment ) exams and I know she will do really well because she has been working very hard.”
But it has been tough for Suzanne Featherstone who is a single parent.

Shivannie Featherstone with her mother, Suzanne Featherstone

“Every day I spend at least two thousand dollars just to take her to school and my only means of support is my father. I try my best but many days I can’t send her to school, because I can’t afford to, but I teach her a lot at home, and the teachers are really good with these children.”
Shivannie lives with her mother at Amelia’s Ward but goes to school at Wismar. She attends the Wismar Hill Primary school, the only learning institution in Linden with a unit for the visually impaired.
According to her mother, Shivannie was born with cataracts in both eyes and had surgeries for her condition at the age of two and three. She subsequently went to Cuba at the age of six for other corrective surgery.
In class, teachers have to read for the visually impaired child.
She is expected to have laser surgery to have her vision corrected, but her mother Suzanne says she would have to seek financial help as she has no money for the procedure.
This hard-working twelve year old, is however unperturbed, and quite excited as she cannot wait for the results of the SSEE examination to come out.
Asked which Secondary School she would prefer to go to she confides, ‘I would like to go to St Roses, because I think they have a unit there for the visually impaired, she whispers.

Relon Sumner
Relon Sumner also recently wrote the grade six examinations and like Shivannie is visually impaired, and attends the Wismar Hill Primary with his younger brother Roell, who is also visually impaired. But where Shivannie has low vision in both eyes, Relon only last month became blind in one eye. His teacher has to read to him too, so that he could do his assignments.
For Relon and his brother Roell, going to school is challenging because the school is almost two miles away from their home. They live at Christianburg and their mother cannot afford to engage the services of a taxi for them, so they have to walk every day. Their daily trek to and from school involves climbing a hill, in terrain that’s difficult even for the well sighted.
Apart from the tedious trip back and forth, they are sometimes bullied by other children.
Their mother Ronella Jarvis is sad and angry that her children have to put up with this type of bullying, particularly from older pupils.
She is appealing to those in authority to do something to help the visually impaired children, whose parents often cannot afford taxi fares for them to attend school.

Relon Sumner with his mother Ronella Jarvis and younger brother

Ronella said that Relon was observed to have an eye problem since he was in nursery school.
She said that his condition was diagnosed as Congenital Toxoplasmosis, after he became blind in his left eye last month.
She said that she was reliably informed that the disease comes from cats, and admitted that the children loved to play with cats and dogs as toddlers.
She pointed out that even though she was told that Relon’s condition cannot be reversed, she is not giving up. But she will need financial assistance for any corrective medical procedure.
Both parents of these special children were high in praise of the teachers of the low vision unit of the Wismar Hill primary School, for all the support they gave to them.
One of the teachers, Shellon Swaving, described Shivannie Featherstone as a very brilliant child, with a lot of potential, while pointing out that Relon Sumner is also an above average student, considering his condition.
There are presently twelve visually impaired children attending the Wismar Hill primary School.