No Boundaries:
Rice Freshman Lets Nothing Corral Her Adventurous Spirit

By Arie Wilson

Baker College freshman Alysha Jeans may have been born blind, but she certainly sees more potential in the world than most people. Maybe that’s because the 18-year-old has a simple motto: “I refuse to be held back.” That motto has helped take her around the world and made her a minor celebrity.

Alysha Jeans

Jeans traveled to Peru this past summer with Global Explorers, a nonprofit organization that specializes in international immersion experiences for students. The trip paired students who have visual disabilities with able-bodied counterparts and was led by athlete Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to scale Mt. Everest. It was an experience the most visually gifted individual would have trouble describing.

During the group’s 10-day trek through Peru, Jeans visited Cuzco, where she toured nearby Incan ruins; shopped at the Pisac Market, once a major Incan trading city; and hiked to an ancient Incan wall and fortress known as Qosqoq’awarina, “the place where one can see Cuzco.”

Before her hike to Machu Picchu, Jeans and her fellow students stopped in the rural village of Chilipahua. There, the group spent the day with young schoolchildren, many of whom walk hours each day to attend class, and handed out books, soccer balls, and other gifts. Next, the group stopped near the village of Keska and camped one night at the edge of the Urubamba River. Both areas hold the remains of Incan cities abandoned hundreds of years ago.

Finally, Jeans and her group took a short train ride to Chachabamba and hiked to the ruins at Winay Wayna, where they joined the Inca Trail and pushed on to Intipunku, a major entry point for climbing the high ridge of the mountain that shares its name, Machu Picchu, with some of the most famous ruins in the world.

The next day, Jeans made it safely over rocky terrain and ancient trails to the ancient Incan city, where she found herself overwhelmed by her surroundings. Using her senses of hearing, touch, and smell and relying on the visual descriptions of her sighted climbing partner, Jeans was able to formulate a mental picture of the ancient city, nestled in the mountainside. “Machu Picchu was wonderful,” she says. “It was truly an amazing thing to be a part of.”

Peru wasn’t the first adventure for Jeans, a graduate of Wichita West High School in Wichita, Kansas. She has been scuba diving, rock climbing, and parasailing. For her 18th birthday this past July, she went skydiving for the first time.

Jeans was born with Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis, an inherited degenerative retinal disorder characterized by a severe loss of vision at birth. Some may think that the daring activities she has undertaken might be prohibitive for someone with vision loss, but Jeans doesn’t believe so—and neither do those who have met her. “The most difficult thing is overcoming stereotypes, and there are a lot of stereotypes out there,” Jeans says. “A lot of people have never met someone who is blind and don’t understand that being blind is just a part of life.” She says she learned early on that she can do anything a person with sight can, just in a slightly different way.

Director of Disability Support Services (DSS) Jean Ashmore and adaptive technology disability specialist Zoe Honor have worked with Jeans to ensure the physics major has all the tools she needs to be successful at Rice. In Jeans’s case, DSS provides Braille-translated textbooks, audio books, and other adaptive technologies, and Honor converts each of Jeans’s tests into Braille. An outside consultant was brought in to help Jeans learn the layout of Rice, and she has been very quick to adapt to her new surroundings. “Alysha is an adventurous person who loves life and cherishes new experiences,” Honor says. “We are lucky to have her here at Rice.”

Thanks to her adventurous nature and infectious personality, Jeans is featured in a television program produced last fall by the Travel Channel, which interviewed her for a documentary on her trip to Peru with Global Explorers.