World - Blind boxer inspires Ugandans

Talk about shadow boxing.
In the center of a flyblown gym, where the musk runs strong and the weak are not welcome, Bashir Ramathan bobs and weaves, his tattered gloves punching furiously, trying to find their target. Blows rain down on his arms, his chest, his sweat-beaded face. But his fists keep flying - all completely in the dark.
"You better watch my hook!" he warns. "It's fast! It's sharp! Watch out!"
Ramathan is entirely blind and he is a middleweight boxer. It sounds improbable - and dangerous - but it's his way of dealing with his disability.
This husky, bearded bricklayer from the Ugandan slums is fearless, calling out all the other boxers in the gym to go toe-to-toe with him - as long as they wear a blindfold.
On a recent day, another fighter - and a quite chiseled one at that - tied a sweaty T-shirt over his face, and he and Ramathan duked it out for several rounds, trading some serious head-snappers.
There were some wild whiffs, too, and at one point, the two boxers were back to back, punching like crazy in the absolute wrong direction.
Ramathan said he tried to home in on smells and sounds, like the squeak of the shoes and the huff of his opponent's breathing.
"Bashir fights with his brain," explained his coach, Hassan Khalil.
"He has the talent," said Monica Abey, a young woman contender who has trained with him.
But this Ugandan Rocky story isn't about boxing, really. It's about how a man who suddenly lost his sight 12 years ago has gone from a sullen figure sitting in a one-room shack waiting for some orphans to boil his next bowl of gruel to an inspiration across his country.
Whenever he goes for his morning run, with his shorts pulled over his sweatpants in the old-school style and a 12-year-old jogging alongside him, holding his wrist as a guide, people pop out from their vegetable stands and telephone kiosks and whistle and shout happily at him.
There are no ramps here or guide dogs. The ground is uneven and strewn with rocks, muddy in some places, gravelly in others. Even for those with perfect vision, it is difficult to walk without tripping. But somehow Ramathan does it, navigating the gullies and the slimy sewage ditches, the soft drink trucks parked like boulders in the middle of alleyways and the maniacal bicycle taxis that zoom across the road without a moment's notice.
He was clipped by a car a few years ago. His right knee still hurts. But he keeps going.
Officials of Ugandan organizations for the blind say Ramathan has become a hero to the estimated 500,000 Ugandans who are blind.
"Here is a man who is showing that blindness is not the end of the world," said Francis Kinubi, chairman of the Uganda Blind Sports Association.
He said that Ramathan was helping raise attention and much-needed money. This year the association will miss the Paralympic Games in Beijing because it did not have the $200 to begin the registration process, much less the airfare, a telling sign of how few resources are available for disabled people in much of Africa.
Ramathan, who says he is either 36 or 37 (he doesn't know precisely), hails from Naguru, a poor neighborhood just outside downtown Kampala, the Ugandan capital. Naguru is known for its red-dirt hills, its zinc-roofed shanties and its fast hands.
Uganda has a strong fighting tradition, going back to the flamboyantly cruel dictator Idi Amin, who was a heavyweight boxer himself. And within Uganda, Naguru has produced some of the nation's hardest hitters, like John Mugabi, nicknamed the Beast, who fought in the United States and nearly beat Marvin Hagler, and Michael Obin, a national welterweight champ.
Countless other aspiring Naguru contenders skip rope, pump rusty iron and spar in dimly lit cinder-block gyms that are squeezed between the shanties and house all the often glorified nonglories of the boxing underworld - the saggy punching bags, the flattened noses and the oversized dreams of street kids.
Ramathan grew up fighting. His parents died when he was young. He dropped out of school to lay bricks. He was known throughout Naguru as a great athlete - an excellent soccer player and a fearsome fighter.
But in 1996, something strange happened. He got pounding headaches. He went to see a doctor and the doctor told him he was going blind.
"First my right eye, then my left," he said. "Then dark, all dark. Just black, black, black."
The doctor said there was nothing that anyone in Uganda could do to help.
His wife promptly left, he said, and his brother and sisters abandoned him, too - "they got problems of their own," Ramathan explained. With no government disability payments, he survived off the equivalent of a few dollars a week donated by the local mosque. Orphans from the neighborhood came to his hut to help cook. He spent a lot of time inside.
"I felt sad at first, but then I found out there were so many blind people," he said.
Two years ago, he decided to return to the ring.
"I wanted to get fit," he said.
His jab may be stiff. His footwork may be clean. But introspection does not seem to be Ramathan's strong suit. His life is simple. He eats, he sleeps, he prays, he fights. When he pounds the heavy bag, he puts some impressive, melon-sized dents in the leather.
In Uganda, the line between amateur and professional boxing is often blurry, with some young fighters making a few hundred bucks by slugging it out at local nightclubs. Last year, Ramathan was the main attraction at a charity match that helped raise $2,600 for his local gym, the East Coast Boxing Club. He fought a professional fighter (blindfolded, of course). And won on points.
Since then, journalists from across Africa have come flocking. With a long, white smile, he remembers in particular a certain female South African reporter who danced with him outside his hut. The other day a Dutch film crew began making a movie about him. Thanks to all the publicity, one of his ex-girlfriends - he seems to have many, along with five children - now wants to get back together.
Still, Ramathan said he would give all this up for two working eyes.
"People think I'm pretending," he said. "They think I'm doing this for attention or for money. But I'm not pretending. I want to see, like them."
His plan now is to start his own worldwide blind boxing league.
"If blind people can wrestle or throw a javelin," he said, referring to well-established blind sports, "why can't they box?"
Someone recently told him about a blind boxer in neighboring Tanzania.
Ramathan is trying to find him. He is also looking overseas.
"There are a lot of blind people in America, right?" he asked. "Think any of them will want to fight me?"