ZAMBOANGA CITY -- Teddy Kahil is totally blind. As he turned 46 this year, however, his accomplishments are near-extraordinary for a man of his condition, and he even continues to strive to do more for himself and his fellow persons with disability (PWDs).
For starters, Kahil received the Apolinario Mabini Presidential Award from former president Benigno Aquino III in a ceremony in Malacañang back in 2013. At present, he is a social welfare specialist at the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) Area Vocational Rehabilitation Center (AVRC) III in Zamboanga City.
Kahil’s game-changing “path to righteousness” began when his vision started to rapidly deteriorate while he was studying nautical engineering at the Zamboanga State College of Marine Sciences and Technology.
A Muslim Tausug from Jolo, he would play basketball whenever he returns home to Sulu. He recalled that he would apply sunblock cream on his face every time he played, but as he sweated, the cream seeped into his eyes and gradually harmed them.
One morning, he woke up and saw the sun as if it was a pinlight. For a while after that, limited vision would come and go, but soon after, on a New Year’s Eve revelry in his friend’s house in 1995, the acrid smoke from exploding firecrackers totally shut down his sight.
He groped his way back home using his hands and feet, and could not see the people who called him along the way.
“I became suicidal after that, I wanted to tear out my eyes,” he remembers – a la Oedipus. “I was also in denial,” he said, adding that for some time, he believed his sight would return.
As a spiritual person, he said his values enabled him to overcome this challenge, and his attitude made him strong and determined.
An eye specialist said he developed UVitis on one eye, and optic atrophy on the other. He was declared medically and legally blind in 2000, yet he continued his college studies and graduated in 2005.
While still in college, he began to seek rehabilitation assistance from DSWD. He also started to encounter social discrimination for being a PWD.
The Professional Regulatory Commission did not allow him to take the nautical engineering board exams. With his college qualification, though, he began to work as a manpower development officer in the AVRC.
In line with his work, he wanted to study in the Western Mindanao State University’s (WMSU) College of Social Work and Community Development as an undergraduate.
Instead, he was offered to enroll for a master’s degree in social work. He graduated in 2009 after studying while working in DSWD.
“I recorded the lectures and used Braille to study the lessons,” Kahil recalled.
During that time, he became active in civil society, advocating various causes and issues concerning PWDs.
He successfully lobbied for the creation, through a city ordinance, of a PWD assistance unit in the local government’s City Social Development and Welfare Office. When it became operational, he joined and headed the unit.
He prioritized all kinds of help for PWDs –- wheelchairs, livelihood, jobs, discounts, and full implementation of the Magna Carta for PWDS, among others. He was acknowledged as a PWD champion and was elected president of their association.
“My advocacies are part of my constitutional right,” Kahil asserted.
He became the president of the Zamboanga Peninsula Federation of PWDs and president of the Philippine Blind Union. As such, he was invited to the 9th World Union of the Blind in Florida, USA and was elected secretary-general of the Union’s Asia-Pacific regional office.
He later travelled to Canada for the Union and to Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia. He went to Singapore on an invitation of the World Intellectual Property Organization, in connection with his advocacy to transform all printed publications into computerized talking readable formats.
The proposal was pushed by the Marrakesh Treaty of the Union, and he has written the senators and Department of Foreign Affairs to ratify the treaty as state party.
As regional PWD federation head, he helps local governments draft ordinances intended to assist the impaired. Both houses of Congress invited him to their public hearings on the Bangsamoro Basic Law, as he is a Muslim leader and had lobbied for provision in the law to contain a PWD protection program, which he said appeared in the bill’s final draft.
More awards
In 2010, the Department of Education (DepEd) bestowed on him the Outstanding Achievers Award for the Visually Impaired in Community Service. In 2013, he earned a Mabini Award. The year after that, the city government of Zamboanga granted him the Outstanding Achievers Award, while WMSU also named him as outstanding alumnus.
In 2016, Peace Advocates Zamboanga bequeathed him the Peace Weaver Awards. This year, DepEd again gave him an honorary award for innovations.
This 2018, as well, he returned to AVRC and was appointed head of its pre-vocational services program, where he helps prepare PWDs to enlist in the center’s various crafts and skills training courses, such as carpentry, massage, garment making and bag weaving.
The preparation includes learning Braille, mathematics, harmonics, mobility, housekeeping and so forth to enable them to successfully acquire the competency training.
Kahil has three children, all still in school. Right now, he continues to strive for higher accomplishments, this time as a student in WMSU’s College of Law.
“I am happy,” he said. (PNA)
