In the past, I had experience dining with a blindfold but it was not as dark because I could still see some light under the blindfold. Hence, this trip was mysterious to me for the reason that I had no idea what was lined up ahead for us and I had never experienced being in total darkness. The thought of it made me feel frightened as I had the thinking that I might get lost or even fall in the midst of the tour.

However the DID tour was not as scary as I had expected and it turned out to be a memorable and captivating experience for me. I also enjoyed the mini-activities because it helps to be mentally prepared for the tour. The activities taught me that our sense of taste weakens when we cannot see what we are eating. When we are about to enter the dark room, they provided us each with a walking cane and taught us how to hold them properly. I understood more about what the blind are going through once we entered the dark room with the walking cane. Our guide, Wesley was very experienced and he gave made us felt assured and safe even though we are like a flock of lost sheep wandering in the darkness. I was glad that I did not have to go through the trip alone but with my friends because with them around I feel more secured. The tour has taught me how to view being blind in a positive light because this trip was more of fun than really what the blind really face in the society. In real life, they have no walls to depend on when they are outside unlike when we are in the dark room. To add on, they also had to learn how to feel and adapt by themselves, which I felt was really admirable! It really takes a lot of courage to accept the fact that they had lost their eyesight and move on with their lives positively. Personally, I enjoyed the boat ride the most because it was a very joyful experience to be riding in boat but you cannot see how it looks like. The different locations such as the market place, the statue of Stamford Raffles and the Café triggered my imagination and I was picturing how they looked like during the trip. I thought it was good leaving the place without really seeing how it looks like because I can keep those images of imagination into my memory. I sincerely feel that everyone should have a chance to go for this trip because it really is very different from other field trips or holidays where you depend more on your sense of sight to see and admire the scenery around them. They should try using depending more on their other senses, such as their hearing and smell to have a different perspective of way people view things.

I feel that DID is a wonderful learning model for BZSE and PCS students. DID is a very innovative example that we can follow and help us develop our creativity. It also gives us encouragement that we can come up with more of such social enterprises to help those disadvantaged in the society by employing them into new formed social enterprises!

Lastly, we can help to contribute to the DID social enterprise by telling our fellow mates in school or even out of school about DID and its purposes. Furthermore we can also help to come up with advertising campaigns for them and market DID to more Singaporeans. Together we can help and create more change to improve the lives of the marginalized!

PeiQing
BZSE T01