[Sportsandrec] Blind Boxer article

[Lori M. Miller]

Everett and all,

While listening to the Banquet speech tonight, President Maurer referred to 
an article that appeared in the New York Times about a blind Boxer. I'll 
paste the link and the text of the article.

A Blind Boxer Inspires Uganda
Vanessa Vick for The New York Times

"If blind people can wrestle or throw a javelin, why can't they box?" BASHIR 
RAMATHAN

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Article Tools Sponsored By ad.196154/500days_nytimes_120x60_v03
By
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: August 15, 2008

KAMPALA,
Uganda

TALK about shadowboxing.

In the center of a flyblown gym, where the musk runs strong and the weak are 
not welcome, Bashir Ramathan bobs and weaves, his tattered gloves punching
furiously, trying to find their target. Blows rain down on his arms, his 
chest, his sweat-beaded face. But his fists keep flying - all completely in 
the
dark.

"You better watch my hook!" he warns. "It's fast! It's sharp! Watch out!"

Mr. Ramathan is completely blind, and he is a middleweight boxer. It sounds 
improbable, and dangerous, but it is his way of dealing with his disability.

This husky, bearded bricklayer from the Ugandan slums is fearless, calling 
out all the other boxers in the gym to go toe-to-toe with him - as long as 
they
wear a blindfold.

On a recent day, another fighter, and a quite chiseled one at that, tied a 
sweaty T-shirt over his face, and he and Mr. Ramathan duked it out for 
several
rounds, trading some serious head-snappers.

There were some wild whiffs, too, and at one point, the two boxers were back 
to back, punching like crazy in the absolute wrong direction.

Mr. Ramathan said he tried to home in on smells and sounds, like the squeak 
of the shoes and the huff of his opponent's breathing.

"Bashir fights with his brain," explained his coach, Hassan Khalil.

"He has the talent," said Monica Abey, a young female contender who has 
trained with him.

BUT this Ugandan Rocky story is not about
boxing
, really. It is about how a man who unexpectedly lost his sight 12 years ago 
has gone from a sullen figure sitting in a one-room shack waiting for some
orphans to boil his next bowl of gruel to an inspiration across his country.

Whenever he goes for his morning run, with his shorts pulled over his 
sweatpants in the old-school style and a 12-year-old jogging alongside him, 
holding
his wrist as a guide, people pop out from their vegetable stands and 
telephone kiosks and whistle and shout happily at him.

There are no ramps here or guide dogs. The ground is uneven and strewn with 
rocks, muddy in some places, gravelly in others. Even for those with perfect
vision, it is difficult to walk without tripping. But somehow Mr. Ramathan 
does it, navigating the gullies and the slimy sewage ditches, the Pepsi 
trucks
parked like boulders in the middle of alleyways and the maniacal bicycle 
taxis that zoom across the road without a moment's notice. He was clipped by 
a
car a few years ago. His right knee still hurts. But he keeps going.

Officials in Uganda's blind community say Mr. Ramathan has become a hero to 
the estimated 500,000 Ugandans who are blind.

"Here is a man who is showing that blindness is not the end of the world," 
said Francis Kinubi, chairman of the Uganda Blind Sports Association.

He said Mr. Ramathan was helping raise attention and much-needed money. This 
year the association will miss the
Paralympic Games
 in Beijing because it did not have the $200 to begin the registration 
process, much less the money to cover the airfare, a telling sign of how few 
resources
are available for disabled people in much of Africa.

Mr. Ramathan, who says he is either 36 or 37 (he does not know precisely), 
hails from Naguru, a poor neighborhood just outside downtown Kampala, Uganda's
capital. Naguru is known for its red-dirt hills, its zinc-roofed shanties 
and its fast hands.

Uganda has a strong fighting tradition, going back to the flamboyantly cruel 
dictator
Idi Amin
, who was a heavyweight boxer himself. And within Uganda, Naguru has 
produced some of the nation's hardest hitters, like John Mugabi, known as 
the Beast,
who fought in the United States and nearly beat Marvin Hagler; and Michael 
Obin, a national welterweight champ.

Countless other aspiring Naguru contenders skip rope, pump rusty iron and 
spar in dimly lighted cinderblock gyms that are squeezed between the 
shanties
and that house all the often glorified nonglories of the boxing underworld: 
the saggy punching bags, the flattened noses and the oversize street kid 
dreams.

MR. RAMATHAN grew up fighting. His parents died when he was young. He 
dropped out of school to lay bricks. He was known throughout Naguru as a 
great athlete
- an excellent
soccer
 player and a fearsome fighter.

But in 1996, something strange happened. He got these pounding headaches. He 
went to see a doctor, and the doctor told him he was going blind.

"First my right eye, then my left," he said. "Then dark, all dark. Just 
black, black, black."

The doctor said there was nothing that anyone in Uganda could do to help.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/world/africa/16ramathan.html