00:00Marlon Parejo is a police officer. In his time in service, he was a criminal analyst.
00:05He suffers from glaucoma. He got blind at age 31 and now he's 46.
00:10And he's an archer at Point's Archery Club.
00:14I always tell people, being blind now is not like being blind for a long time.
00:17Now I can make phone calls, receive phone calls, make WhatsApp messages, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, you name it.
00:28He's also into public speaking and Archery is just another form of expression.
00:33Shooting an arrow without seeing where the arrow's going is interesting, for the least.
00:40He uses sound to his advantage.
00:42Was it difficult adapting?
00:44Of course it was. I mean, the first thing I was thinking about, boy, the amount of people I look
00:50up, boy, oh gosh, they're going to come for me.
00:53But I've learned, especially from a lot of reading, that the fear in your mind is more dangerous than the
01:00danger that actually exists.
01:02So sometimes you're afraid of things that don't even exist.
01:05And after a while, once you do it once, you do it twice, it becomes easy.
01:09And the same thing with this archery.
01:10I did it once.
01:11Okay, not bad.
01:19Once he gained a better understanding of his reality, he gained a new sense of sight as well.
01:25His friend, Barry Charles, introduced him to the sport.
01:28I have so much respect for that guy and admiration.
01:32He said something to me one time that was so profound that it stuck with me.
01:36He said he would never let his disability define who he is.
01:39And I find that it was amazing to adopt that kind of serious condition to us, to have somebody say
01:47that to you.
01:48It stuck with me.
01:49With me, if you tell me I can't do something, no one's if I want to do it.
01:54That is me.
01:55I mean, if you look on YouTube, you'll see a video of me rappelling on a 400-foot cliff because
02:01somebody thought I couldn't do it.
02:04And, yeah, yeah, yeah, you see, what happens is that you can't, I'm not distracted by sight.
02:11Yes.
02:13It's been an enlightening journey so far.
02:15I know of blind persons who have three and four degrees.
02:19And as soon as they walk into an interview, the interviewer dismiss them already without even asking a question.
02:25Because they don't know what they can do.
02:27He's eager to challenge the best.
02:28If it is possible to see that, hey, this man who can't see past his nose, hitting target, and I'm
02:35not even going to try to compete with people who can see, I'm just glad to hit the target.
02:39But if it is, it do happen to hit bullseye, then that means he sighted, it was not big, hey,
02:42now we're going to step up the game.
02:44When we interviewed him, he had just four hours of training.
02:48And when he picked up archery, he hit the mark.
02:50His aim is guided by the touch of this mark in addition to a few other cues.
02:54And the back of his heels are against the piece of wood.
02:58This will orient him towards the target.
03:01With that touch in there, as he explained earlier, he now knows where the target is.
03:06Parejo is not the only impaired archer at Point's Archery Club, which has taken front on embracing the idea of
03:13nurturing talent.
03:14I learned that what you see on TV with Archery is total, total garbage.
03:22When you see Legolas from Lord of the Rings, you say, they're like nonsense.
03:26Yeah, no.
03:26Sergio Dufour, TV's Export.
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