A VISION OF COURAGE
When Jo — who was born deaf — heard for the first time, her experience touched millions. Cruelly, now she’s going blind . . . and this diary of her odyssey to see the world before it’s too late will make you weep all over again
LIKE anyone with impaired sight, I walk unfamiliar routes with trepidation. Sometimes I carry my white cane, but today I’m holding my mum’s arm. Ahead, in my narrow field of vision — my sight is so limited I view the world as if through a letterbox — I see a winding path flanked by a stone wall.
The hike is more rugged and steep than I imagined it would be. I see it now as a metaphor for my life: sudden pitfalls, steep challenges, pleasant grassy tracts and sunlit stretches.
I am walking along the Great Wall of China and I know the visual memory of it will be seared in my mind for ever.
All the more so because my sight is worsening and the memories I capture today may have to sustain me through decades of darkness ahead.
I hear sounds, too: the tap of my boot on rock, then a quieter footfall on grass. The rasp of my breathing as we climb a steep ascent. And all along, as it always has, my mum Ann’s presence reassures me.
This trip is one of a series of momentous events that have changed my life immeasurably in the past three years. I was born profoundly deaf. The first momentous event happened in spring 2014 when I had cochlear implants fitted and I heard for the time.
As my implants were switched on at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, the first sound I heard was my audiologist reciting the days of the week. I cried at the sheer miracle of it, the everyday wonder of sound.
My mother captured the moment on video and more than 12 million people across the world watched on social media the moment when my silent world burst into a dizzying new dimension.
And as the weeks and months passed, I built up a new library of sounds, of birdsong, roaring traffic, dripping taps and ticking clocks, which friends and family identified for me.
I heard the voices of my loved ones, too; my seven-year-old niece Casey’s laughter and the cadences of music — all for the first time. The cacophony was overwhelming, but I felt intense joy.
Yet just as one new sense was opening up, another was deserting me. My sight was irrevocably dimming.
Why? I have Usher syndrome, a genetic condition that caused me to be born deaf and since my 20s has been slowly and progressively robbing me of my sight.
Now, three years after I heard for the first time (before I had the implants, I relied solely on lip-reading), I fear that the dark is closing in on me.
BUT I will not succumb to despair. I want to wring every drop of joy out of life, imprint on my mind’s eye in vivid detail the wonderful world around me, and recall as many memorable images as I can.
I talked about this ambition in a TV programme last year when I visited the beautiful countryside of the Lake District and Pennines.
It was then that an anonymous well-wisher, a businessman in my native Newcastle, offered to fund the trip of a lifetime and pay for me to see some of the most astonishing landmarks in the world.
I feel such gratitude to him, and I know the visual memories of my adventure will remain all the more vivid because my sight is fading.
I chose to spread my visits to China, South America, Europe and India over nine months, so I could savour the sights, the new sounds and smells. On each leg of the journey I was accompanied by a family member.
Meanwhile, I continue my job as head of PR for The Hearing Fund UK, a charity set up by the Osmond singing family, providing hearing aids to underprivileged children and sponsoring music lessons.
Since returning from my travels, aged 42, I’ve also become engaged. Last week my boyfriend, Steve, a paramedic, asked me to marry him. We met in a cosy pub near my house and knew instantly that we were right for each other.
And although I’ve been in love before, this is the first time I’ve been certain I want to commit.
So as I return from one round of adventures, I’m moving from my home in Newcastle to Durham to live with my fiance and embark on another adventure — this time a lifelong one.
Here is the diary of my extraordinary journey around the world...
THE JOY OF HEARING A LLAMA SQUAWK
I’M WALKING along the rocky terrain of the Inca Trail in Peru with my aunt Edna, who is in her 70s, to Machu Picchu, a mysterious 550-year-old citadel nestled between two forest-clad peaks.
I concentrate on my footsteps and look down. Mist creeps up the sheltered valleys. A bright yellow flower bursts out of a rock and I spot exotically coloured finches and hear the unfamiliar high-pitched call of another bird.
Until I began to hear, I’d assumed all the birds on the planet sounded the same, but now I know they have a repertoire of songs and tweets as diverse as music itself, and the subtropical forests of the Andes are thronging with them.
At times along the trek the altitude makes me dizzy. Walkers ahead disappear into the cloud that forms a constant backdrop. It
feels as if we are walking in the sky, so high up we can almost touch it. Llamas graze on the terraces and I add their strange cry, something between a squawk and a bray, to my library of sounds. When we reach the summit and look down on the 15th-century Inca citadel we feel triumphant.
My sense of smell is finely attuned because it used to help me recognise people before I could hear or see them (with no peripheral vision I can only see directly in front of me), and here in the Andes it is the scent of pine forests that linger, and the sounds of nature that stay with me.
A DAY OF ECHOES AND A MAGICAL PYRAMID
I stAnd in front of the huge stepped pyramid that overshadows the ancient Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico, marvelling at the ingenuity of the mathematicians who built it over 1,000 years ago. It is designed with such geometric precision that during the spring and autumn equinoxes, shadows mimic the descent of a serpent down its northern side.
the heat is sweltering. I watch an iguana scuttle past. It looks as prehistoric as its habitat. A musty scent of history, strong, pungent and damp, dominates, and when our guide talks I hear a new echo.
It’s different from the one that bounces across the walls in the newcastle Metro. this is a big, ricocheting outdoor echo that I log in my sound archive.
At night, before I drift into deep, soundless sleep, I take my implants out and think about the new sounds I’ve heard today. Learning them involves intense concentration. I used to feel guilty about admitting to sensory overload. these days I don’t. If I need a rest from the hubbub, I tune out and retreat again into my world of silence for a while.
ENJOYING THE BABBLE OF NEW LANGUAGES
Our bus climbs the ever-narrowing road to the summit of Corcovado mountain, where the giant 30-metre statue of Christ the redeemer stands, arms outstretched, 700 metres above the sprawling mass of rio.
Having only just become familiar with the sound of spoken English, it is strange and intriguing to hear the excitable rhythms of Portuguese.
And here, on the mountain top, tourists from all over the world babble in a dozen alien languages. I scale steps and escalators until the statue of Christ is right in the centre of my field of vision.
What I see in the narrow viewfinder of my diminishing sight is acute and in sharp focus, and I’m convinced I’m more observant than those who take their sight for granted.
On Christ’s chest I notice a heart. I’m not religious, but I say a little prayer of thanks that I’m here, looking at this miracle of sculptural engineering. I simply ask for strength to face whatever lies ahead.
TEEMING STREETS AND COLOURFUL SARIS
AftEr my implants were fitted, I went to Bangladesh to see my childhood friend Amina Khan and fulfil a promise we’d shared as 11-year-olds to help the deaf children of her native country. Amina and I were at school together in Gateshead, tyne and Wear. We were drawn to each other by our shared sense of being different. I was set apart by my deafness, Amina because she was the only Asian girl in our school.
My mission was to take hearing aids to transform the lives of 500 hearing-impaired Bangladeshi children, and Amina — who’d returned to her homeland when she was 16 — was there to meet me.
so when I go to neighbouring India, I’m prepared for the explosion of colours, sounds and smells: exhaust fumes, honking horns, every vehicle imaginable on its roads. I’m ready for the hustlebustle of its cities, the crowds and confusion, the proximity of wealth and poverty, of chaos and calm.
What strikes me about the taj Mahal, though, is its breathtaking serenity. It is a perfectly symmetrical ivory marble mausoleum, but as I get close to it, I realise it is inscribed with a delicate pattern of flowers.
I visit with Alana, 36, the younger of my two sisters, and there is so much to store in my mental compendium of sights and sounds: sitar music, the fragrant scent of curries, the parched, arid countryside, teeming streets and colourful saris.
ICE CHINKING AND GURGLING FOUNTAINS
tHE trevi fountain is frozen when my elder sister Julie, 46, and I arrive in rome, and as a thin winter sun warms the ice I am amazed by the trickle of water as it thaws.
I had not known, in my silent world, that water could be so noisy, that it gurgled as it flowed down plugholes, that it roared down waterfalls, or that ice chinked in glasses.
In rome, animated chatter drifts from trattorias with the smell of garlic and cigar smoke.
I stand in front of the Colosseum thinking about the gladiatorial contests, dramas, animal hunts and even executions that took place there and now I can even imagine the shouts and applause of the crowd.
LAUGHING AND CRYING ON THE GREAT WALL
tHE time I am spending with my mum in China is precious, as life is so busy we don’t see enough of each other. In Beijing, my blonde hair makes me a novelty and locals stop to take selfies with me. I love the sound of their giggles.
As we walk along the Great Wall on a cold, bright day, we reflect on my life, laughing and crying by turns. Mum, 72, who worked in an office while she raised her three daughters, and my dad Al, 74, a retired cable contractor, never made me feel marginalised by my deafness.
Mum fought for me to go to mainstream school. she was there with a hug and consolation when bullies spat on my back on the school bus, knowing I couldn’t hear them.
she strides in step with me, holding my arm as we walk a tiny portion of this 5,500-mile wall, and I reflect that I owe my independence and resilience to her determination that my life should be as rich and diverse as the lives of her other daughters.
shadows may be closing in around me, but now I have another new sense to compensate for my diminishing sight. I am also blessed with safety, security and a happy home.
But most cherished of all is the love of my family and friends that envelops me.