Sign language development in Guinea Bissau
- Country:
- Guinea-Bissau
- Organisations involved:
- Portuguese Deaf Association (APS)
Guinean Association for the Rehabilitation and Integration of the Blind (AGRICE) - Synopsis:
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In January 2005, Mr José Augusto Lopes, a representative from AGRICE visited the Portuguese Deaf Association (APS) to ask for help concerning the education of 97 deaf children attending the only school for deaf children in Guinea Bissau.
AGRICE had founded a school for blind children in Bissau in 2003, but around 50 deaf children also requested admission in the first year. This number doubled in the following year.
The staff of the AGRICE school had no experience and no knowledge in deaf education. APS has no financial resources, but the board decided that there was a very urgent need for intervention, so they decided to support the project. They selected a deaf sign language teacher with experience of working in deaf education and a sign linguist to travel to Guinea Bissau.
APS and AGRICE worked together on an intensive training project over a 2-week period, from 23 August to 5 September 2005.
Mariana, a hearing linguist, who has 8 years of experience in sign linguistics and teaching deaf and hearing teachers gave a seminar to a group of teachers, mainly from the school, but also those who came from all over the country.Marta, a deaf sign language teacher with 9 years of experience with deaf children worked with a selected group of deaf children.
The team never intended to teach Portuguese Sign Language, which was the initial request from AGRICE. However they rather planned to observe the level of the signing currently going on and to raise awareness and skills of the users of the local Sign Lanugage.We found that the signing was still basic, but since deaf children got together at the school, and deaf people also gather in small groups in the villages, the team could actually observe some consistency in their signs.
As part of the project, it was decided to document the commonly used signs, and make a dictionary to give the Sign Language of Guinea Bissau a push.
We worked with a small group of good deaf signers, from different ages, for two afternoons.In the end we had recorded 200 native signs! We printed a record of these signs in a booklet and left it for the school.
AGRICE's president, Manuel Lopes Rodrigues, travelled again to Lisbon in January 2006, and reported that this mini-dictionary, had been hugely popular not only in Guinea Bissau, but also in the other portuguese speaking countries, such as Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Sao Tome & Principe. - Issues encountered:
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The time available to develop the dictionary was very limited and there is a need to invest a much greater amount of time in making a comprehensive record of signs used in Guinea Bissau.
There is still a need for teachers to become competent in Sign Language, and APS is now training one deaf adult from Guinea Bissau to become the country's first sign language teacher.
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