[Sportsandrec] Blind Boxer article

[Everett Gavel]

Hi Lori, and All,

I heard President Maurer mention that, yes, but I forgot about it with
everything else going on this past week.  So thanks for this needed
reminder.  I appreciate it.

For the banquet I was actually able to sit in the frontmost table right at
center stage.  Not sure how long the mics were recording, but you might have
heard me chanting to the other Ohioans now and then, before things got
started, with a, "Give me an O!  Give me an H!  Give me an I!  Give me an O!
What does that spell?"

You figure out the rest.  (smile)

And since my mouth just happens to be bigger than others sometimes, well, I
had a little fun in the beginning.  Two other states around our tables did
the same thing, and once on each of them, when they yelled out, "what does
that spell," I chimed in with, "Ohio!"  Just having a little competitive
fun, y'know?  But, um, if anyone reading this was at one of those tables,
disregard this note.  Wasn't me, nope, If it ain't recorded, I deny it.  Oh,
wait.  Shoot... um, nevermind.


Strive On, Fight On, Ride On & Rock On!
Everett
www.DreamingInTandem.blogspot.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: lori at asmodean.net (Lori M. Miller)
Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 22:26:40 -0400
Subject: [Sportsandrec] Blind Boxer article

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

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.

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