A special moment with the hearing impaired...

Some hearing impaired participants filling a form at the entrance
“People living with deafness are not disabled. The difference between us and them is that they have a special language that we do not understand”.

These were the words of Mr Kodwo J.A. Boateng, the founder of House of Grace School for the Deaf when I had the opportunity to interview him in my first write-up on the hearing-impaired.

Although my engagement with some hearing impaired pupils has given me a reason to accept this assertion, my participation in a conference for the hearing impaired at the University of Ghana, Legon, last Saturday cemented my change of perception about the hearing-impaired.

The conference
Organised by the Department of Linguistics of the University of Ghana (UG) in collaboration with the Centre for Linguistics of Leiden University in the Netherlands, the conference discussed language acquisition and socialisation among the hearing impaired in Africa and other parts of the world.

It also formed part of a two-week vacation school for deaf Africans at the UG’s Department of Linguistics sponsored by the Leiden African Studies Assembly (LeidenASA) in the Netherlands.

Apart from the participants in the vacation school, which comprised 22 tertiary students and graduates from Nigeria, Mali, Ethiopia and eight other African countries, more than 70 other hearing-impaired including some members of the Ghana Association of the Deaf also took part in the conference.

Some hearing-impaired academics from selected countries including the Netherlands and the United Kingdom made presentations in sign language on “language acquisition and socialisation in deaf and hearing families in Africa and deaf families worldwide.”

Intriguing experience
Unlike other conferences which were dominated by those  with no hearing impairment, this was entirely different with almost all the participants being hearing impaired, using  the sign language, the official means of communication at the event.

For the few hearing participants who could not sign, the presentations were interpreted by word of mouth to aid their understanding.

Given the fact that sign language differs from one place to another and considering that the hearing-impaired participants came from different countries, the presenters adopted what was described as iconic representations (iconicity) in their presentations to create a common understanding.
For instance, the interpreter could make a sign of someone drinking from a cup to describe the word ‘drink.’

In the case where iconic signs could not be used, about three separate interpreters chosen from the various countries, interpreted the presentations to the understanding of the group they represented.

For the first time in my life, I witnessed a poem being performed in sign language. Although that session was not interpreted to the hearing, the energetic actions displayed by the performer and the cheers she received at the end showed that I had missed an important message in her delivery.

For the few hearing participants, it was the price we had to pay for failing to learn the special language of the hearing impaired and, perhaps, we were made to experience a tip of how bad we make them feel as no opportunity is offered to them to participate in mainstream discussions.

Lessons for Ghana
It is estimated that there are not less than 110,000 deaf people in Ghana, a country of not less than 28 million inhabitants.

For decades, the hearing impaired had been cut-off from participating in decision making and had been marginalised in terms of access to quality education, healthcare, justice among other social needs.

At the conference, participants were able to ask questions and make intelligent contributions because they found themselves in an environment that understood their nature.

I am convinced that the hearing impaired possesses special qualities and ideas which we could tap into in our quest for development. What is required is our readiness to break the language barrier and provide the right environment to support their development.

If the hearing have bothered to learn and practice the language of the hearing impaired, the language barrier which many people have wrongly considered as a disability would have been broken.

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