Other People's Lives
“I am one of the luckiest people alive. I can get up in the morning and help people. I get up and I smile!”
This regular feature shows how different people come to terms with sight loss and move on to have busy and fulfilling lives. This time we feature Paul Martin from Gravesend who has recently moved to South Shields.
Paul, who has some vision in one eye, was born with cataracts although his visual impairment was not diagnosed until he was two years old. At just six years of age his right eye was removed following an unsuccessful operation to improve his sight. In total, 31 year-old Paul has had 36 eye operations and yet he remains very cheerful and positive. He is passionate about disability sports and has qualifications in sport and community care work. “The way I see it”, says Paul “is that I have adapted to what life has given me and I know that I have been able to achieve more than many people of my age”.
School days were a familiar story; like many other children with a visual impairment he suffered at mainstream school because he could not see the blackboard; his teachers did not understand visual impairment and branded him as lazy. He still remembers one teacher shouting at him and telling him, “if you aren’t going to work then leave”. His mother did complain about this and school life did get a little better but at 11 he left and went to Dalton House, the specialist residential school in Kent.
During his education at Dalton House, Paul decided he wanted to spend his life helping people and when he finished school he went to West Kent College to study for qualifications in care work. This led to voluntary work in Romania and he was one of six students specially selected to work in an orphanage for four months to teach the youngsters about the British way of life and also give English language lessons.
“This was the biggest eye opener in my life and I realised how lucky we are,” says Paul about his experience. “The kids were so poor and they thought we were well off. It was a tear jerking experience as all the children had HIV. They had nothing and yet they made pictures which they gave us to keep”.
When he returned home Paul joined the Winged Fellowship Trust and spent four years as a volunteer carer at their holiday centre in Southampton and also on their European coach trips to countries like Italy, Switzerland and Turkey. Next he put all this voluntary experience to good use in his career working as carer in nursing homes in the south of England, including one run by Age Concern.
Paul’s other passion is sport and has always played visually impaired football but one of the high points of his life so far has been to play for a fully-sighted team. “My best achievement has been in playing football. While I was at college I trained with a sighted football team and I played in four fully sighted matches; the first game was an even bigger achievement than when I represented Wales in the Pan Disability Football Tournament,” says Paul.
Other sporting achievements include winning two silver and three gold medals at the British Blind Sports Athletics for the long jump; triple jump and the 400; 1,500 and 5,000 metre sprints and winning one gold medal, one silver medal and two bronze medals at the London Metro Games for the 400 metres;15,000 metres; the 10,000 metres and the long jump. In 2003 Paul was nominated for the West Midlands Disability Sports Person of the Year and, although he did not win, he was delighted to be in the final nine out of nearly 100 people who had been nominated.
Paul has now moved to South Shields to be with his partner who he met when he visited the North East to play in a visually impaired football tournament. “Since I have been up here everyone has made me very welcome. Life is about what you make of it. If you do things other people will help you. If you just sit around and do nothing people will not help you,” says Paul who is looking for a job in disability sports and also plans to start a keep fit group for visually impaired people in the South Tyneside area.
If you would like to chat with Paul and find out how he keeps motivated and busy, get in touch with Susan Khan 0191 4785959.
