Featured Person: Arie Farnam

Name: Arie Farnam

Age: Graduate

Disability: Legally blind

Program Countries: Germany, Russia, Czech Republic, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Ecuador, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia

Program Length: Over six years, including a year abroad in Germany, various time periods spent studying abroad, and years of working as a journalist and English teacher

Program Type: Study abroad, teach abroad, professional exchange

About Me: I was extremely motivated to travel as a young person. I was afraid that I would be trapped by the lack of public transportation in my rural home in the United States. I feverishly applied for scholarships so that I could travel and gain my independence. I started out as an exchange student in Germany, when I was sixteen. I spent a year studying at a highly competitive German secondary school in 1992. In college I participated in study abroad programs in Russia, the Czech Republic and Zimbabwe. Later, I worked, mainly as a journalist but also teaching English at times, in the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Bangladesh and Ecuador.

Were your international exchange experiences arranged through exchange organizations?

As a journalist, I wrote for The Christian Science Monitor, Business Week, Transitions Abroad and other publications. I also accompanied a MIUSA program to Russia as an interpreter.

If you received any scholarships, stipends, or other funding for your exchange, who provided them?

When I produced two documentary films in Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic, I received a grant from the Oregon Commission for the Blind, which funded my equipment.

Did you document your experiences (blog, journals, letters, etc)? Please share your travel weblinks, if you have any.

Archival articles at The Christian Science Monitor, www.csmonitor.com.

What were your concerns as you prepared to travel? What kinds of resources did you use to address these concerns (website, advisor, book, etc)?

As a young person, I don't think I was particularly prepared for my experiences. I did have very good mobility and orientation training as a teenager and I think that is key. I strongly recommend any visually impaired traveler make sure that they are equipped to handle unpredictable environments, including learning to use a cane as an identification device, even if you don't normally need to use one in your comfortable home environment.

What was your experience living in the host country? Please share your impressions of housing, transportation, activities, cultural attitudes towards disability, and your strategies for navigating abroad.

When I go abroad, people who are not visually impaired often have concerns about my safety. I can't say there are no safety concerns, but they simply are usually not that different from safety concerns in the US.

However, in the Siberian town where I studied Russian, walking on some streets was dangerous, since the metal manhole covers were often stolen and sold for scrap metal. Even sighted people were known to fall into the sewers and break their legs. Then, there was the complete lack of traffic rules for motor cycles and other small vehicles in Bangladesh, which together with severe overcrowding made the streets very dangerous.

I dealt with both of these situations by being very careful, moving as slowly as necessary and, in Bangladesh, entrusting my safety to rickshaw drivers. My motto has always been check three times and then check again. I have never been successfully pickpocketed through all of my travels because I make sure my valuables are not in a back pocket in easy reach. I am always semi-consciously aware of where my valuables are and who is in my personal space, even when I cannot change the situation. I had a few close calls with threatening people, but I was not taken completely by surprise, because I was always listening to tones of voice and people's movements and postures.

Something that I encountered, which any traveler with a perceptible disability may also face, is discrimination. I experienced teachers in Germany, who refused to allow me into their classrooms, despite the orders of progressive administrators. I encountered people who were very frightened that my disability might be contagious in various parts of the world. In many places, shop keepers refused to allow me to look at behind-the-counter items more closely. Those are just a few examples.

There is little an individual traveler can do to overt prejudiced responses. In fact, trying to hide your disability can lead to major orientation and safety problems. But it is helpful to remind yourself that a lack of a politically correct mask does not necessarily mean that people in other countries are truly more prejudiced. They simply have not been conditioned to hide it.

I also find it helpful to rate the responses of shop keepers and others. 1 is good behavior. 2 is someone trying to be politically correct but not entirely making it. 3 is someone being ignorant but not hostile. 4 is an actual hostile behavior that is hurtful but not otherwise harmful. 5 is for the most extreme responses. The system helps me keep my perspective and my cool. And if I share a language with the people I'm dealing with, I can inform them of the grade they get and sometimes that is enough to bring them around.

What would have been helpful to have known before you began your journey?

There are very few countries were transportation is as difficult as it is in the US. Most developed countries have good public transportation systems today and most developing countries function on the assumption that most people don't have cars, so even if there is not real public transportation, there are various alternatives, such as cheap collective taxis or a friendly and relatively safe hitchhiking culture.

Learning strategies for orientation is also helpful. Many visually impaired people are used to easy orientation in familiar-type environments (grid streets, for instance) and find the very different urban landscapes or rural environments they travel in to be a major challenge. I suggest visually impaired travelers focus on learning the local language before you travel, even if it is only for a few weeks. Then, use it mercilessly to ask for directions. If all you can do is ask the question and not understand the response beyond the general direction, ask a different person every 20 steps. You will get there eventually. It is also good to work on mental mapping. Using sensory landmarks (smells, specific noises) as well as counting intersections. Learn to obtain extremely specific directions.

What were the benefits of the experience, and how has your international experience informed your future plans?

I have enjoyed a degree of freedom that I could not have imagined, if I had not traveled so much. The experiences of crossing cultural and physical boundaries were always delightful for me. The cost has been that I have not been able to be as physically close to my family as I would like, but today the technologies of internet phone services have made it possible to keep in closer contact then when I began.

Do you have an exchange or disability-related question for Arie? Email clearinghouse@miusa.org to get in touch with her.

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