A Courageous Walk in the Dark

By Rohan Brown

This book entitled "A walk in the dark" depicts some of the struggles which I underwent in my young days growing up and some of the major hurdles I had as a blind person and how I dealt with them. I am presently living with blindness in both eyes for over ten (10)years now in the Parish of Portland with my wife and two children of ours. I am still a Police Officer who enjoys his job immensely.

The main purpose of this book is to show that no matter what you go through in life, there is always a way out and as long as you have hope any and everything is a possibility.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462031450

Rohan Brown

My name is Rohan Dwight Brown, born in St. Catherine Jamaica on the 15 day of January 1973. I am the fifth of eight children for mother Corine Mills and the seventh of twelve for my father James Brown. I went to the Ginger Ridge All Age School and then the St. Catherine High School. Poverty and circumstances prevented me from pursuing my education any further as I had to begin searching for work at an early age. After working at different jobs for a while, I enlisted and became a law enforcement officer in the Jamaica Constabulary Force where I have been serving for over seventeen (17) years now. During my service as a Police Officer, I became totally blind in both eyes. I lost my job as a result of this but was able to get reinstated after going back to learn Braille, Computer and mobility at the Jamaica Society for the Blind.

Book preview

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

MY YOUNG DAYS

CHAPTER TWO

THE WORKING WORLD

CHAPTER THREE

POLICING LIFE

CHAPTER FOUR

MY LIFE AS A BLIND MAN

CHAPTER FIVE

LOST MY JOB

CHAPTER SIX

BACK ON THE JOB

CHAPTER ONE

MY YOUNG DAYS

The things which we fear the most in our journey through life, sometimes are just the very things needed for us to make the changes necessary to fulfill our purpose. All we need is faith and the belief that every thing which happens to us in life happens for a reason. After each disappointment and heartbreak, we can make it if we try hard enough. Sometimes we are pushed to our limits, because God has more faith in us than we have in ourselves. Yesterday’s failures are, most times, tommorrow’s success. Therefore, be not afraid of what life has to offer, just have faith in yourself and everything will be fine.

I am a true believer of destiny. We were all born with a purpose, even though sometimes we drift from our true reason for existence and thus alter the desired outcome for our lives. We need to have the determination to discover and accomplish our future. Some things happens in order to push us closer to our destiny or to align us with a particular state of mind or emotion so that our purpose can be fulfilled. The only thing which can change our destiny in life is prayer and faith. Something has to happen to alter our purpose and this is what gives rise to the opportunity to examine ourselves and get back on track.

Interestingly enough, one of my greatest fears growing up was being blind, but it is always said that the things that you fear the most, are the things that shall come upon you. I have learned to expect the un-expected, which I take to mean that you expect the worse, but hope for the best. Life is like a road with a lot of signs. It’s difficult to go over the mountains and easy to go down in the valleys, negotiating all the curves and turns can be a tedious task, taking time to look for the speed bumps, holes, warning signs, oncoming traffic, pedestrians, and all the other obstacles which may cause you to slowdown or come to a complete stop. In life, one has to have excellent braking system, engine, spare parts, ways and means to fix a problem, acceleration, in case you need to speed up and all the other mechanical devices needed to facilitate your every day movement. Life has signs such as stop, slow, narrow bridge, cross roads, dead ends, and round about, toll road, single lane traffic, road close, fording and all the others. Whenever you reach at life’s cross roads, you better know if you should go straight, turn right or left. At life’s round about, if you don’t know where to exit, you might just keep going round in a circle, or find yourself returning from whence you came. Life’s toll road is going to cost you money, probably more than you can afford or planned to spend. Life’s dead end means that you have to stop, turn around and try another avenue. On life’s single lane, there can be no one beside you, you are alone, just like on life’s narrow bridge, you have to be prepared to go through alone.

It’s never easy to motivate one’s self, but, believe it or not, there is no one who can motivate you, no matter what they say, unless it comes from your own inner being. A person can only encourage you to find the inner strength, but he cannot give it to you. A person can only tell you about mistakes made and how to deal with them, but you have to make your own. No one can jump your hoops or cross your hurdles for you, each person must deal with his or her own livity. Life is a gift, given to each person, of which no one can live it for you. Every man lives his own life the way he feels, makes his own decisions and faces his own consequences for his actions. Never let life’s phases deter you, at all cost, be the best that you can.

I am not going to try to explain the complexities of destiny or purpose because that is beyond me. If you believe in and read The Bible, it tells a story of a king who was destined to die, but when he heard, he turned his face to the wall and prayed and cried, and as a result of this, his years were extended by fifteen years. When things happens in our lives, it gives us the opportunity to prepare ourselves in making necessary changes. A train is not expected to go off track, but if it does, something else must have happened to have caused this, and thus it gives the operators of the rails an opportunity to examine the track, the mechanism, and everything else surrounding the accident before going back into operation.

Born and grown in deep rural, North Western St. Catherine, in a poor family, not even knowing my father until I was twelve years old and having three brothers and three sisters by my mother’s side, I know what it is like to travel down life’s road. I will always remember the days my mother use to cry when she could not find the basic necessities to feed us. There and then I knew that life could not continue like this and I needed to make a difference. I had to be the best that I could be and it was not going to be easy, no matter what. I had been at life’s fording as early as before my teenage years, trying to keep my head above the waters whilst trying to cross.

Watching my mother struggling with us from a early age without the support of my father was a worrying factor for me, but it made me realize what it meant to have a father figure in one’s life and from then on, I decided that if I ever got children at any time during my life, it didn’t matter where or by whom, I would have to be a part of their lives because no child deserve to grow without the love and care of both parents. It also gave me the opportunity to see how far a mother’s love could be stretched and what it means to have endurance under any circumstance.

As far as I could stretch my imagination, my life was never going to be easy. Struggling through my life at a tender age, going to school, which was approximately a mile and a half away, having to walk to and from school, some times, the aches and pains as a result of fatigue in my joints were too much to bear, resulting in my constant absence from school for weeks at a time. Still yet I had the resilience and the capacity to finish the school year at the top of my class in grades one, two, and three. There were days when the pain was so intense that a class mate of mine had to carry me on his back, even before the school day was over, to my house, where I would get treatment from my mother.

I had begun to be resolute from this time, deciding that not even the pain was going to stop me from being the best that I could be. I learnt the value of friendship. Anthony was there for me in every way possible. He would find out if I was going to school in the mornings and would not leave me during the days or in the evenings when school was out. He was more than a classmate to me.

Another one of life’s speed bumps slowed me down when I reached grade four, as the pains got worse, and I was absent from school more frequently than before. This caused me to be placed fourth in my class in grade four, and second in grade five, but by the time I had reached grade six, I was back at the top, accelerating, and regaining lost ground. In that year, I passed my Common Entrance Examination and was awarded a space at the St. Catherine High School, where I spent five years.

I was determined to make a difference in the life of my mom as well as for my own development, and I knew what I had to do for it to happen. There was no time for me to think about my past dilemmas. I had to be focused on what I wanted and how was I going to make it a possibility. Every time that I stumbled in life, no matter how often, I had to pick myself up, dust myself off and carry on. I had to believe in myself and my future.

My dad and step-mother, with whom I spent the first three or four months of my high school life, made life no easier, as most night I had to go to bed without dinner. My dad would be away for two weeks at a time, claiming to be working, during which, hell could not be much worse, at the hands of my evil step-mother. Most evenings I would be told that my dad didn’t leave any money, therefore, there was nothing to cook. Mean while my younger siblings, using every opportunity presented to them to remind me that I did not belong, would often tell me how their mother cooked during the day and they had eaten until there was no more room for food, and the pots and plates washed to prevent me from knowing. I distinctly remember one fortnight, daddy came home and I complained to him that I was hungry, his exact words to me were, I’m hungry too, I only had a cheese trix for my dinner.

This ordeal taught me how to endure hunger for prolonged periods of time. I was not going to do anything out of the way to find food and therefore I had to condition my mind for any eventuality. I had to tell myself that I had eaten and was alright with it so as not to think about it too much. I was learning not to be envious and to accept my status in life, not begrudging any one for what they had that I didn’t have.

I guess that’s just one of life’s round-about which I had to go around and return from whence I came, because at the end of this, I was told by my father that my step-mother said I could not stay there and I had to return to my mother’s house (which, by the way, was located thirty two miles away from where I was now going to school, whilst my dad was living within walking distance) as I was making it inconvenient for her and her children in terms of accommodation.

I was learning how not to treat my children as a father and how not to allow a stepmother or wife to take total control over them so as to make them suffer. It was a timely lesson, in which I learnt that the job of a parent is a full time one in which you don’t get time off, can’t take a break and at which you cannot afford to fail.

I returned home to my mother’s house, after spending about three months with my father, and started traveling from there to school, waking up at various hours in the mornings so I could catch a bus by the latest, 5a.m. to reach to school at 7:50 at which time school started. School ended at 3pm in the afternoons, but the bus would not come until 4:30 or there about, therefore I would not reach back home until close to 8pm. Most of the days I slept in