Battling Genghis Khan

Tanvir Naomi BushVisual Impairment 13 Comments

It’s been a funny old week. That bloody lorry I talked about in my last post was still deafeningly loud behind me and making things a little sticky. I’ve been a little….self obsessed. A little elbows and angst. A little more irritable then, say, Genghis Khan. To distract myself I try to be useful. I volunteer to help a PhD student with his research on the correlation between visual impairment and depression. He is a gangly, morose young man dressed […]

Trucking Sight.

Tanvir Naomi BushVisual Impairment 12 Comments

You may recall that I had a hospital visit just before my trip to Lusaka and they said I had lost more vision. They meant ‘losing’! Holy shit people! I went out a couple of times last week and was completely off balance. Bits of pavement missing, people emerging magically in front of me, invisible cars. This all gets a little unsettling when trying to have ordinary conversations with people in cafes or at the supermarket. One doesn’t just turn […]

Sticky Fingers

Tanvir Naomi BushUncategorized 9 Comments

The kid is looking at me. The whites of his enormous eyes glisten in the gloomy room. He is three and beautiful. He has been picking his nose for the last ten minutes with one hand whilst squeezing a banana to gluey mucus in the other and is now looking for a place to wipe his fingers. He grins up at me with sudden gleeful inspiration. My face must be a rictus of polite horror – a truly British expression- […]

Mind Full of Windmills

Tanvir Naomi BushZambia 8 Comments

Was it a windmill? I felt for the last month as if I was charging towards something important. I felt heroic, gulping down hope and inspiration, speeding like a bullet towards something huge and exciting just ahead….and then pooffff…. The thing I was chasing evaporated. I find myself scrabbling hard but beginning to fall slowly backwards into the pretty padded cell that is my life in Cambridge. Jobless again. Lonely again. Bollocks. I miss the Zambian sky.   (c) T. […]