Plight of the deaf community

Clara Mudefi
LOOKING back in the archives I have noticed that this period of the year goes hand in hand with speech and prize-giving days in schools. Speeches of how the school has been functioning have been conducted to students and parents with prizes being awarded to the best students who seemed to have excelled contributing to a brighter future and literate Zimbabwe.
I have also observed that among students who won prizes, all the students were able bodied. What has happened to the hearing impaired community? Has the society turned away from their efforts? Is it that they cannot learn and excel in academics?

As I was wondering, my questions were finally answered when The Manica Post was fortunate enough to be part of the guests at Chikanga Secondary School for their speech and prize-giving day that was held recently.

I was quite captivated by the school headmaster, Mr Madera, when he announced that the school was chosen to offer a special class for the hearing impaired.

“Chikanga Secondary School was chosen by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to offer a special needs class for the hearing impaired students last year. It is one of the schools in Mutare Urban that now enrol hearing impaired students for their secondary education,” said Mr Madera.

He also talked about the challenges they were facing as a school in terms of infrastructure development.
“The special class needs much attention, a classroom that the teacher takes the students to, to revise concepts that would have been taught. The students participate during lessons with the hearing ones. The school is failing to build adequate infrastructure owing to financial problems,” he said.

Though the school was facing this challenge for the hearing impaired, it was managing. It was quite remarkable that among the award winners were two academic prizes for the hearing impaired scooped by Tatenda Marume, a Form One student and Malvin Nyakuchena a Form Two student who had excelled in Mathematics.

It was exciting to note that there were two hearing impaired students who managed to prove to the society that they, too, could make it in the academics despite their inability.

The teacher went on to praise Malvin Nyakuchena who was reported to be doing well in building.
In an interview with one of the hearing impaired teachers, Ms Angela Dzombe, she highlighted how she felt. She said society was failing to add a hand to the special students.

“What inspired me to be part of this deaf culture was because I saw the need of these people. They are easy targets of abuses as they cannot communicate due to communication barriers. Some of the students come to school without bathing, leaving one wondering if the student really came out of a home. Is the society failing to keep an eye on and protect these children?

“At this school, there are eight hearing impaired students, four in Form One and others doing Form Two. As a teacher teaches concepts in class, I will be interpreting the concepts in sign language. Subjects like Shona, History and Bible Knowledge are a bit challenging for them to understand since their vocabulary is too limited to characterise every word,” she said.

After every lesson the hearing impaired teacher takes the students for revision outside the class. There has to be a specially built class, with suitable facilities. The school lacks such facility.

Most of the students seemed to be getting on well with the eight, positively disregarding their inability.