In Ghana, deaf children live in isolation
Over sixty years after a missionary started educating the hearing-impaired, deaf Ghanians still struggle in the margins of society. Yet they made an indelible impression on me.
In 1957, Andrew Foster, an African-American missionary, set sail to West-Africa to establish a school for the deaf. He had been deaf since the age of eleven and knew the struggles of communicating as a child. After settling in on the shores of Ghana, he reached out to regular schools and asked to let him use their classrooms after hours to teach deaf children. Word spread fast and it wasn’t long until there were over 300 kids who applied for a waiting list, wishing to attend the lessons of “the father of deaf education in Africa'".
While education improved drastically in the next sixty years, Ghana’s hearing-impaired remained isolated and lived as outcasts in their own communities. Sadly, the minority can hardly communicate with neighbours and, worse, many fathers and mothers are unable to understand their deaf children’s hopes and fears.
Back in 2017, when I lived in Ghana’s capital Accra, and I was told about the isolated lives of these kids, I felt an inexplicable urgency to record and share their story. Perhaps I felt closely connected to the fate of these children due to the loneliness they experience in daily life. After all, loneliness is something I know all too well. It is a rather familiar feeling during my travels, that I can best describe as a warm embrace from a long lost friend.
After doing some desk research, talking to experts and learning the basics of sign language, I set an appointment at Ghana’s State School for the Deaf (JHS) to meet with students and lear about their lives in the shadows of society.
At that time, the school was located in a peaceful neighborhood east of Accra, just a few hundred meters away from a beach where the Gulf of Guinea and the African mainland interlock. The dusty road that led me to the facilities blended seamlessly with the sandy schoolyard where a Ghanaian flag hung motionless from the top of a flagpole. Next to it, a shiny, yellow school bus melted away in the blazing afternoon sun. Left alone some students seeking shelter in the shade of a mango tree, it was unusually quiet around the classrooms due to a holiday break.
Headteacher Isaac Atah welcomed me in his office, which was shrouded in darkness. A lone ray of light shone through a crack between the curtains, putting a spotlight on his desk that was packed with dusty files and crumpled newspaper clippings. From here he ran a school that provided education and housing for up to 270 students at that time.
After a jolly but firm handshake and a cup of coffee, Isaac started a long-winded speech about the state of education for the deaf. While he lauded the government for stepping up its support, he fiercely criticized the attitude of the parents of his students who, according to him, had unreasonable expectations of the school.
‘Parents and relatives expect the school to freely provide all services and goods, even when the children are at home during holiday breaks,’ he told me. ‘They want us to take full responsibility for their children, both financially and in their education, while instead, they should proactively try to learn sign language and guide their children into the working society.’
To raise awareness the school organises parent-teacher meetings, but they have little effect. ‘Unfortunately, the level of attendance is low as parents are not willing to put effort into it,’ claimed Isaac.
‘I feel lonely’
After a lengthy yet compelling discourse, Isaac introduced me to some of his students who returned from their holiday break early. They gathered in one of the classrooms, where the tables and chairs were stacked on top of each other like a game of Jenga. The children had plastered the blackboard with the names of European football clubs and religious slogans. Most of them wore sports jerseys.
‘At home, I generally feel lonely,’ Obed started. Isaac translated. ‘There is no one able to communicate with me. Besides, there are no other deaf children to reach out to for a conversation or a game.’ The 23-year-old started at the school at a late age. ‘My parents don’t understand sign language, which constantly results in miscommunication. When I try to express myself, they frequently call me ‘stubborn’ and punish me for my behaviour. As a result, sharing my adventures and experiences with them is rather difficult.’ Like his fellow students, Obed preferred to be around other deaf children.
Isaac added that due to their isolation from society, the students tend to look out for other deaf people during holiday breaks, which mostly makes them decide to return to school early.
When I called the Ghana National Association of the Deaf a few days earlier, they expressed similar concerns, among others about the lack of schools for older students and limited availability of technical resources for the deaf. None of the fourteen schools for the deaf in Ghana provided listening devices or devices at that time, such as hearing aids, or speech therapy. This made people more reliant on sign language, which was rarely used outside of specialist schools.
‘In order to treat people with hearing disabilities as equal citizens, we need to make access to justice free from all obstacles, whether these are laws, practices or infrastructure,’ Josephine Nkrumah said, chair of the government’s National Commission for Civic Education.In line with the later she fiercely advocated for the protection of deaf Ghanaians against exploitation and discrimination.
‘Let me give you an example,’ she continued. ‘If a deaf citizen goes to court, but no interpreter of sign language is provided during the process, the citizen has been denied access to justice due to the absence of effective communication or information. Similar obstacles are seen in public offices, police stations and hospitals.’
‘Yes, the historical stigma of deaf people being seen as dumb is rapidly decreasing, but due to the communication gap, they are still treated as dumb.’ This afternoon, Isaac endorsed the words of Josephine Nkrumah.
Countering isolation
Statistics show that there are around 111,000 deaf people in Ghana, a country with a population size of more than 33 million. As many of them are not taught how to integrate into the hearing world, their plight is further exacerbated in parts of society where people consider deafness to be a curse or punishment for earlier sins.
‘I don’t feel appreciated in my community, as my parents, siblings and friends don’t feel the urge to learn sign language, while I’m unable to learn how to hear,’ Wisdom explained. He was a 20-year-old student at that time and typed on his phone to share his frustrations with me. He said he picked up most of his values and social behaviour by going to school and watching television. ‘When I was young, I joined my family at church, but as I wasn’t able to understand what was said, I didn’t feel connected to religion and left the Christian community.’
That afternoon Wisdom seemed inseparable from his smartphone and constantly shared his excitement of returning to school on Facebook, a social media language he did speak. At the same time he updated his online friends about his concerns when it comes to pursuing a career after graduation later that year. Nearly 80 percent of deaf and hearing-impaired people live in low-income communities and are not able to sustain themselves.
‘In order to counter isolation and advocate for equal rights for the deaf, the government should provide basic education on sign language at regular schools around the country,’ headteacher Isaac emphasized.
‘Additionally, interpreters should be available at public offices and government institutions at all times. Only by those means, the lacking communication and isolated lives of deaf people can be countered.’
Meanwhile I noticed how the students gathered around me, they enjoyed each other’s company and my attention for their stories. After I shook hands with every single one of them, they collectively raised their hands with a raised index finger, pinky (little) finger and an extended thumb, which stands for ‘love’ in sign language. It reminded me about the beauty of random acts of kindness.
That’s all for now folks. I hope you’ll stick around and it would be greatly appreciated if you tell people (to tell people) about this publication. Do feel free to drop me a line in case of any questions or suggestions and don’t forget to have a look at the amazing work of the African creatives I work with here.
Daaf
PS Snippets of this edition of The Bright Continent were published at Al Jazeera earlier.