National anthem with a difference

Fungai Muderere recently in Beitbridge
Florence Nightingale is widely regarded as the mother of modern day nursing and one dedicated teacher from Beitbridge along with her deaf and dumb students are on their way to creating a legacy.

Liseli Nare, a graduate from Joshua Mqabuko Polytechnic, United Teachers College (UCE) and University of Zimbabwe where she specialised in teaching children with special needs, took six hearing and speech impaired pupils at Beitbridge Primary School under her wing. As their choir master, they gesture the national anthem through sign language.

Sign language is a language in which one chiefly uses manual communication to convey meaning, as opposed to acoustically conveyed sound patterns. It is one of the 16 languages recognised by the national constitution.

This form of communication can involve simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to express onea��s thoughts.

At Beitbridgea��s Nuli High Schoola��s Schools Career Guidance and Schools Climate Change Education and Awareness Campaign ceremony, Nare and her team had the perfect stage to show their skills.

The local leadership, school children, officials from various organisations that included Zimbabwe Climate Change Coalition (ZACC), Ministry of Secondary and Primary Schools and Ministry of Environment, couldna��t help but do a double take.

The young boys and girls went through the national anthema��s stanzas with so much aplomb, albeit using gestures.

a�?I have been a teacher for hearing and speech impaired pupils since 2011. Each time we go for assembly they also need to know what is being said. They also need to participate in some of the activities that will be done. As such, I communicate with them in sign language and being citizens of Zimbabwe they also need to know the national anthem,a�? said Nare.

Nare said it was easy to teach them the anthem.

a�?It all depends on how the learners tend to grasp some concepts and with regards to the national anthem I had no challenges since the song mentions natural tangible things like the rains and rivers,a�? she said.

While she acknowledged that they also make it a point to teach the pupils church hymn songs, Nare said some hymn songs had proved to be difficult to master for speech impaired pupils.

a�?Some church hymn songs are too abstract to be understood by pupils with such a particular impairment. The hymn songs are not simple as they dona��t have some tangible things to mention,a�? she said.