Lets go fly a kite!

Every Friday afternoon in term time I have been visiting the dozen Deaf children in the district Special Needs Unit of the local school, Paipir Primary (say pie-pea). My sign language is slowly getting more fluent with use and I have attempted to tell Bible stories.

Let's go.....

We have also been making kites from plastic bags and split bamboo. Kites that actually fly are very rare in Uganda so it has been a lot of fun teaching the Deaf kids this 'special' knowledge. This is a small effort to redress the natural balance which leaves them well behind the curve in almost every way, in a largely unsympathetic hearing world.

fly a kite!

There should be about 120 Deaf children at Paipir but there were only 12 last term. The rest are isolated in their home villages because the parents are unaware that they can go to school, are too poor to attempt it or believe it is no worth sending a deaf child to school.

All of us hearing people pick up our mother tongue without a thought as we grow up. For the deaf, that does not work and sign language must be learned from an outside source; an instructor or a school. Without language, communication, and life, is miserably limited.

Channel 4, 'Unreported World' made an excellent documentary about the issues of Deafness in rural Uganda which you can watch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNCPgrm8Gu4.

On Sunday mornings at the Church of Uganda (Anglican) church we provide sign language interpretation for the Deaf adults and children who come. After church I host 'Deaf Breakfast' and usually welcome around 10 young adults (with 3 children) and a sign language interpreter into my home for 'Break Tea'. It is generally not very deep but provides the Deaf community with a social space.

Fun at Deaf breakfast

The church has come to rather enjoy having the Deaf coming to Sunday service and a few church members have learned sign language, which augurs well for the future. The Children presented a sign language song to the church one Sunday that was well received.

Hearing aids? Sorry, there are no technicians and even if the batteries were available, which they are not, there would be no money to pay for them.

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Time to catch up, better late than never.

I have been very remiss in my blogging. It was December last year....... Well, no excuses. But I would like to give you a series of sketches of what I have been up to, starting with Pads.  You can expect further posts in the coming week or so on the Deaf, the Radio, Farming and Future Plans. 

Pads Project

This school had a 241 girls over 12. In the foreground is the stack of knickers needed for each to get four pairs. 

The main project I am involved with is providing washable sanitary pads for schoolgirls. I have written about this before, so you can scroll down through the blog or link to here or here to get the full low-down.

To date, this year we have visited 16 schools, 11 of which were 1^st time visits. About 1450 girls are now equipped to go confidently to school.

In June we were invited at short notice, by an NGO called ActionAid, to provide pads for the girls of 10 schools at their expense and we have 4 of those remaining to visit in the next two weeks.

Then we can resume visiting our 'old' schools and providing for their 'new' 12 year olds.

This year, by the end of the final term, we should have made and distributed in excess of 10,000 pads and bought and distributed the same number of knickers.

Does it any difference? So far it has proved very difficult to get clear statistics. But anecdotally it is not hard to show and I have yet to come across anyone here who thinks we are wasting our time.

I spoke to a successful woman of around 40 years a few months ago who said that by the time she reached the end of secondary school, she was the only girl in the school. All the others had dropped out for various factors peculiar to gender. Foremost among these was the problems and embarrassment of dealing with periods in a mixed school, without sanitary materials. She was very enthusiastic about this project.