The Island of the Colorblind

That evening we all packed up, sad to be leaving these islands. Bob would be returning directly to New York, and Knut heading back, by stages, to Norway. Bob and I had seen Knut at first as a charming, scholarly, slightly reserved colleague – an expert on, and exemplar of, a rare visual condition. Now, after our few weeks together, we saw all sorts of other dimensions: his omnivorous curiosity and sometimes unexpected passions (he was an expert on trams and narrow-gauge railways and was full of recondite knowledge on these), his sense of humor and adventure, his cheerful adaptability. Having seen the difficulties which attend achromatopsia, especially in this climate – above all the sensitivity to light and inability to see fine detail – we had a renewed appreciation of Knut’s determination, his boldness in making his way around new places, his openness to every situation despite his poor sight (perhaps indeed his resourcefulness and unerring sense of direction had been heightened in compensation for this). Reluctant to say goodbye, the three of us stayed up half the night, finishing off a bottle of gin which Greg had given us. Knut took out the cowrie necklace which Emma Edward had given him on Pingelap and, turning it over and over in his hands, started to reminisce about the trip. ‘To see an entire community of achromats has changed my entire perspective,’ he said. ‘I am still reeling from all of these experiences. This has been the most exciting and interesting journey I will ever make in my life.’

When I asked him what stayed in his mind above all, he said, ‘The night fishing in Pingelap…that was fantastic.’ And then, in a sort of dreamlike litany, ‘The cloudscapes on the horizon, the clear sky, the decreasing light and deepening darkness, the nearly luminous surf at the coral reefs, the spectacular stars and Milky Way, and the shining flying fishes soaring over the water in the light from the torches.’ With an effort he pulled himself back from the night fishing, though not before adding, ‘I would have no trouble at all tracking and netting the fish – maybe I’m a born night fisher myself!’

But was Pingelap an island of the colorblind after all, an island of the Wellsian sort I had fantasied or hoped for? Such a place, in the full sense, would have to consist of achromatopes only, and to have been cut off from the rest of the world for generations. This was manifestly not the case with the island of Pingelap or the Pingelapese ghetto of Mand, where the achro-matopes were diffused amid a larger population of color-normals.[44]

Yet there was an obvious kinship – not just familial, but perceptual, cognitive – among the achromatopes we met on Pingelap and Pohnpei. There was an immediate understanding and sharing between them, a commonality of language and perception, which instantly extended to Knut as well. And everyone on Pingelap, colorblind or color-normal, knows about the maskun, knows that it is not only colorblindness that those affected must live with, but a painful intolerance of bright light and inability to see fine detail. When a Pingelapese baby starts to squint and turn away from the light, there is at least a cultural knowledge of his perceptual world, his special needs and strengths, even a mythology to explain it. In this sense, then, Pingelap is an island of the colorblind. No one born here with the maskun finds himself wholly isolated or misunderstood, which is the almost universal lot of people with congenital achromatopsia elsewhere in the world.

Knut and I each stopped in Berkeley, separately, on our way back from Pohnpei, to visit our achromatopic correspondent, Frances Futterman, and tell her what we had found on the island of the colorblind. She and Knut were especially excited to meet one another finally; Knut told me later that it was ‘an unforgettable and very stimulating experience – we had so much to talk about and so much to share with each other that we talked incessantly like excited children for several hours.’

Like many achromatopes in our society, Frances grew up with a severe degree of disability, for although her condition was diagnosed relatively early, good visual aids were not available to her, and she was forced to remain indoors as much as possible, avoiding any situation with bright light. She had to contend with a great deal of misunderstanding, and isolation, from her peers. And perhaps most important, she had no contact with others of her kind, with anyone who could share and understand her experience of the world.