“Her humour is self-deprecating, and every so often she returns, without affectation, to the issue of her blindness, as if it’s just another fact, like the colour of her dress.”
‘If all you see is all you see, then you don’t see all there is to be seen.’
As an opening line, that rather convoluted sentence challenges the listener to pay attention.
Senator Crystal Asige is a compelling speaker, and her recorded speeches are a collector’s treasure.
Being vulnerable and tugging at heartstrings to wring out compassion is not all she can be. She can also be a fighter, shooting from the hip. There is, for example, her speech before the Kenyan Senate on the 28th of June in the heat of the controversy and street riots over President Ruto’s Finance Bill. She does not mince words in her condemnation of the heavy-handed efforts by the police to put down the protests by the youths, which led to numerous deaths and injuries. The youths of Kenya, she avers, are hungry, angry, and justifiably disaffected.
The speech that goes closest to revealing the complex essence of this blind young lady is her address before the One Young World 23 Summit in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2023, which leaves her audience both sombre and exuberant.
‘For anyone who is visually impaired in the audience,’ at which point she raises her hand to be counted, ‘…I am a black African woman of five foot seven and some change… I’ve got on… Masai earrings and a black dress, which I call my power dress…
Her humour is self-deprecating, and every so often she returns, without affectation, to the issue of her blindness, as if it’s just another fact, like the colour of her dress.
‘I had my first major eye surgery in 2010…General Anaesthetic. Two hours instead of the quick forty minutes they had anticipated, and it didn’t work. … I came out of theatre having lost more of my already declining eyesight…Since High School, I had been losing my sight, very slowly, very gradually. At the time I had no idea why, Glaucoma wasn’t a word I had ever heard before…The ophthalmologist told me it wasn’t just Glaucoma but Glaucoma the Remix…worse in black Africans because of the colour of our eyes…and that I would probably be blind before I was twenty-five…Between then and now, I’ve had over twenty different procedures…I was a teenager then…I was thrust into a world of darkness and inpairment…It’s one thing to go blind, it’s another to go blind in a world steeped with discrimination and prejudices… ‘
She is not looking for sympathy but making a pitch from a position of power, temporal and moral.
‘My name is Senator Crystal Asige, a human that is crazy about amplifying the voices of…the underdogs, like I have always been…making people seen and heard, no matter their ability or disability.’
And then she unleashes her now famous nugget.
‘…The most crucial lesson I’ve learnt is – If all you see is what you see, then you have not seen all that there is to be seen…Let those words resonate, because they encapsulate my journey…’
Crystal was born in Mombasa, Kenya in 1990. She was the youngest of four children. From childhood, she had a bouncy spirit that inspired and stimulated others, along with a creative spirit expressed in a love of music and drama. She was growing up into an active, popular teenager. Then at the age of 16, she began to observe a deterioration in her eyesight. She had to get to class early so she could get to sit in a front row to stare at the board. She found it increasingly difficult to read.
At 17, she travelled to the University of the West of England, in Bristol, to study Film and Theatre.
In her second year, she eventually went to see an optometrist, who made a diagnosis of glaucoma and referred her to the hospital.
It was the beginning of a long journey of endless surgical procedures, each attended by further deterioration of her eyesight.
She returned home to Kenya and was depressed and withdrawn for some time. After what felt like a spiritual encounter with God, she regained her positivity and returned to the UK to complete her studies.
She has not looked back since. She is singer and songwriter to a musical band in Nairobi. She has become universally one of the most recognisable advocates for young people living with different forms of disability. She is active in good causes, such as serving on the Board of Amnesty International, Kenya. Inevitably she has been thrust into the cauldron of Kenyan politics with her membership of the Orange Party. In 2022, while attending an international conference of young people in Europe, she was informed that, under an arrangement peculiar to Kenyan legislature, she had become a member of the Kenyan Senate as a representative of people living with disabilities.
She has gone from strength to strength, using her expanded platform to the fullest advantage. During the recent political troubles in Kenya over the now-shelved Finance Bill, she was very vocal in support of the demands of the young protesters who fought police on the streets.
Her personal life is as inspirational as her vocalisations. Having claimed for herself a right to demand a normal life full of love and great expectations, she is not pigeon-holed as a voice for people with disability, but as a leader of young people in Africa who are seeking to break cultural boundaries and limitations and take African society to the next level.
A few weeks ago, Crystal, at 34 years old, was nominated by TIME Magazine on its 2024 Time 100 Next List. This is a list of influential leaders worldwide who are shaping the future in their fields, defining the next generation of leadership. A VIP as a Visually Impaired Person, and as a Very Important Person, Crystal is a worthy ambassador of the African Generation Z, embodying their resilience in adversity, their quest for self-actualisation, and their boundless potential for achievement.
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