Wacih, a world-class braille writer

Wacih, a world-class braille writer

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Being born blind has posed no barrier to Wacih Kurnaesih, 50, in
building her career as a world-class writer.

The teacher at Wyata Guna state special school (SLB) for the
blind in Bandung discovered the joys of story writing as a hobby,
eventually earning her first place for the Onkyo Braille Essay
Award II in 2004.

Through her essay, entitled Achieving success with Braille,
Wacih was awarded a US$1,000 prize by the sponsors, Onkyo Co.
Ltd., The Braille Mainichi newspaper, and the World Blind Union -
Asia Pacific.

"What I wrote was just my personal experience in using braille
to make my life easier and to channel my interests," she said
humbly.

She claimed to have finished the 900-word essay in only seven
hours. "As it was already in my head, I just turned it into
words. I started at 11 a.m. and finished it at 6 p.m., including
breaks for two meals and prayers," she told The Jakarta Post.

As suggested by the title, Wacih wished to convey that the
pursuit of progress in life was no different for the blind,
despite their disability.

The writing and printing system invented by blind French
educator Louis Braille in 1824 has been the key to her success.
This Indonesian language high school teacher has not been chasing
money or wealth, however. With her success, she wants to reduce
her dependence on other people and express her ideas and feelings
in braille so as to be a benefit to society.

Wacih was introduced to braille at the age of seven, when she
was sent from her birthplace in Sumedang to the Wyata Guna Blind
Institution in Bandung, about 50 kilometers away. Born on April
30, 1954, she mastered braille quickly, mainly due to curiosity.

"My mom used to tell me bedtime stories, which I liked a lot.
So I wanted to read the tales in braille," said Wacih, who enjoys
reading a wide variety of different novels and was thus inspired
to write stories of her own.

Braille also made Wacih more confident as a child when playing
with her sighted friends during holidays in Sumedang. She would
make braille "banknotes" with ordinary paper, which her peers
liked very much. "They might have found it strange playing with
'money' with embossed dots," recalled the mother of two sighted
children, Tommy Rinaldi, 23, and Sendy Nugraha, 21.

As a teenager, she started writing short stories and poems in
braille. The themes were still woven around the tales her mother
used to tell, about lucky children and wealthy, happy kings as
well as moral fables.

Later, she became fond of reading romantic novels of such
famous writers of the 1970s like Marga T and Ashadi Siregar,
which at that time she enjoyed through the assistance of
volunteers who visited the Wyata Guna school to read to her.

It was also braille that led to Wacih's success in her
entrance test to enroll at the state teacher training school
(SPG) in Bandung, which receives mostly sighted students.

But her most memorable moment was not her admission to SPG.

Rather, it was when, in her second year of study around 1972,
one of her stories was published in the Suara Karya daily
newspaper.

Wacih said that her first published story, titled "Gara-gara
rambut palsu" (All because of a wig), was introduced as the work
of a blind student. It was about a girl wearing a wig that gets
caught on something as she was taking a walk with her boyfriend,
making her feel embarrassed.

"I got Rp 3,000 for my first story, which was quite a lot,
because the school fees then were only Rp 100 a month. I spent
the remaining money on treating my friends," she reminisces with
a smile.

Her writing skills enabled her to take her study further after
graduating, enrolling at the Indonesian Department of Bandung's
pedagogic institute (now the Indonesian Pedagogic University).

Publication of her work boosted her confidence in associating
with the 50 other students in her department.

Students there acknowledged her flair for literature by asking
her to help them write poetry for their boyfriends. "As a reward,
they used to treat me to a bowl of meatballs," she said.

Feeling that her writing had to be read by sighted people, she
began learning how to use a manual typewriter. Her ability to
type eventually caused her poems and stories to appear more
frequently in the department's magazine.

In 1980, Wacih married her Wyata Guna boyfriend, Didi Tarsidi,
who was also born blind. She uses braille for facilitating
household routines. "I use braille paper for kitchen spices to
avoid mistakes, and also for documentation of diplomas, awards
and civil servant promotion decrees so that I don't have to ask
anybody to find them whenever I need them," she said.

In a writing contest for special school principals throughout
Indonesia in 1983, she won a prize for "Pahlawan 5K" (5K Heroes),
3,000 copies of which were published by Tirta Kencana.

The book again earned her first place in an SLB teachers'
competition organized by the Directorate of Extraordinary
Education and published by Balai Pustaka in 1986. Her other book,
"Menuju Kemenangan" (Towards Victory), a story set against the
background of Bandung's revolutionary period, can be found in
school libraries all over Indonesia.

The printing of her books produced royalties, which she used
to buy a computer for her husband, Didi, who is now chairman of
the Indonesian Association for the Blind (Pertuni).

The computer is equipped with the Job Access with Speech
(JAWS) program, which can read words on the monitor and assisting
the blind to become computer- and Internet-literate. A graduate
of the pedagogic institute's English department, Didi also speaks
English fluently.

"He's a great motivator. He translated my essays that won
prizes in contests, and typed them up using the computer," Wacih
said proudly.

With her two children now college students, a supportive
spouse, a house and a car, she has almost everything. However,
Wacih still has another dream.

"I would like to see all blind children get the same formal
education as that given provided for the sighted -- as I did --
and be allowed to fill jobs according to their abilities, instead
of just working as masseurs as most of them have done so far,"
she added.