Kenneth Diouf
Kenneth Diouf
Port HarcourtNigeria
About me
I am a hearing impaired man and I work as a teacher of deaf youths in a private deaf school here in Nigeria. I also work with the Deaf Liberty Gospel Ministries, the Gospel Outreach to the Deaf Mission and the Deaf Christian Church of God.
My Story
There are many promising and intelligent young deaf people in Africa, but they often lack adequate educational opportunities and are denied fair treatment in day-to-day life. As a consequence low self-esteem is common and many fail to fulfil their potential. There are so many young deaf people that maintain the mentality that although they are in the world, it is not theirs to explore, conquer, and enjoy. We think things have to be this way because people who do not realise their true potential.
My own childhood has taught me how hard it is for deaf children to succeed in school and in life, but it has also shown me that there are homes where deaf people are greatly loved and respected and provided for by their parents and relations. Opportunities are created or sought for them to improve their education and economic life. These privileged deaf people are often able to contribute to family and society, sometimes helping and supporting their parents, sisters and brothers in the same way that they were helped.
I was born in the Republic of Niger in French–speaking West Africa. Yali Diouf Papa (my father) married three other wives and had twelve children, among whom I stand 4th, but I am the 2nd child among my mother’s eight children. My mother told me that when I was born, she was taken ill and stayed in hospital for up to one year. I am not told the kind of illness she suffered from. But as I grew up, I became aware that my dad didn’t love me much. I often heard insulting words being thrown at me. What accounted for this cannot be separated from the fact that I didn’t display smartness, intelligence or perhaps common sense as a child. The word I used to be familiar with when translated from the vernacular is: “STUPID!”
I was a slow learner. Consequently I earned serious canings, both in school, and at home. I failed to pass the Primary School Leaving Examination. So instead of me spending the customary six years in primary school, I spent eleven long years there. I dropped out of school and my dad began to make plans to enlist me in the army. But one day the principal of the town’s only secondary school said something that indicated his desire for me to go back to school; he said he wanted to see my father. I informed my dad, and both men met. What happened next was that I found myself again in Primary 6 for the fourth time.
During my primary school years, I carried a very tiny fluctuating tinge of deafness as well as being a stammerer, though as we grew older the stammering bouts in my speech gradually disappeared.
As a teenager, when I was spoken to, I would request a repetition of the spoken words. Other times it would happen that though I heard, I would not respond immediately until the words were repeated violently and loudly, or until after they had said, “Look, we are speaking to him, but he wont hear!” One day my mother took me through a dictation. As she corrected the work, she commented that this and that word was misspelled because of “inattention” on my part.
Nevertheless, with each primary class repeated, I gradually began to rise from the bottom of the ladder at school. However the suspected hearing deficiency was determined to stay and grow, even though it was not confirmed medically until I was between nineteen and twenty years of age.
A year after my return to school, I finally passed the examinations. I finished primary school late and started secondary school late. In secondary school I did well in geography, history, science, and French, but trouble started again when I came to learn English which is taught as a third language in secondary schools in Niger. My inability to understand this strange foreign language with its strangely written and pronounced words made me a laughing stock among the other students.
The hearing problem was still there, but it didn't prevent me from learning the vernacular and French languages and to hear other languages spoken. I was privileged not to be pre-lingually deaf, which, has prevented many deaf people from developing any language skills. Often deaf people have problems with grammar, word and sentence building.
Despite my problems, I was determined to fight off the stigma and embarrassment of being the class's laughing stock, so one day I picked up my English notebook and read and memorized hard. I got the spirit of the English language. After that, my scores were amongst the best. By the time I left secondary school, English language became my best subject.
It was in my third year in secondary school that the hidden hearing problem suddenly become more manifest and more pronounced. I was then 19 years of age. I found myself unable to follow teachers when they discoursed on subjects. I would strain my ears in desperation to hear what they taught. The efforts to hear were to no avail as I missed much of what they said or dictated. At the same time my eye vision became dim or blurred. I saw line upon line of words scribbled on the blackboard, but I could not see well enough to read and take notes unless I went closer to the board.
No illness or any other kind of physical malaise preceded this partial deafness and short-sightedness; it was a complete surprise! I felt despair, anger, and discouragement and became much less interested in school. I became so desperate that I wanted to kill myself, but after a failed attempt, I resolved to live. There would be hope! It was also at this time, that I decided to abandon my families’ Muslim faith in favour of Christianity. This caused a lot of problems within my family – but I was obstinate!
Although the deafness disarmed me on many fronts, I also felt that it had armed me with new instincts of courage, determination, boldness, and confidence on other fronts. I wanted to become a public figure and longed to become a president, but of course that was impossible as opportunities for college and university education were destroyed by my hearing impairment.
When I told my mother about my hearing and sight problems, she was upset. My father told me to keep cool and they did not take any action as it was assumed that I might get over the burden. I also think that perhaps the fact that they could not afford treatment for me prevented them from taking action. Niger is not a developed country and treatment abroad is very expensive. My English teacher, a Ghanaian, asked me to go to the Ghana School for the Deaf and I once saw this nice teacher with my father in our house, but I was never allowed to go and a further opportunity to extend my education was missed.
Meanwhile I became increasingly emotionally troubled and I often didn’t go to school, preferring to read alone in the house or sing songs using old tins as musical instruments.
I was taken to see an audiologist in the only national hospital in the capital city. The audiologist looked like a Chinese or Japanese doctor. This man tested my ears for several hours. He prescribed injections, which my mum, as a nurse administered at home. After the medication, the level of hearing impairment considerably dropped but was not completely annihilated and there was nothing else the doctor could do.
I can hear but I cannot understand speech. I have had ringing, roaring and screeching noises in my ears and sometimes they itch. I can hear the television, the radio, the twitters of birds, and the roars of engines and thunder. I do as well hear the chatter of children, the barks of dogs, bleating of goats, and the shuffling of feet. However, when it comes to understanding spoken speech I have a hard time trying to make out what is spoken unless people repeat the words. However this has often been awkward and embarrassing as people around have their attention drawn toward me. So I often request my speaker to jot down his/her words in order to save time and public embarrassment.
My ability to speak almost perfectly has often tempted people into believing that I can understand them, however sometimes I pretend not to be able to speak so that they have to write everything down! Another effective strategy is to speak but then be quick to indicate, while receiving answers in form of spoken speech, that I am a little deaf. Here improvised signs, a pantomime of speech, are employed for more effective communication.
When words are spoken to me, one at a time, with an interval of few seconds in-between and in a raised tone, I look at the lips of the person speaking. Then I can know the words on the lips, and also hear the words and how they are pronounced. I later mimic the pronunciation in self-training. This way I have learnt to pronounce English words.
My story is typical, but I was lucky to see an audiologist and to have the chance to begin my education. Many parents in West Africa don’t understand the special needs of their deaf children. Sometimes deaf children do not receive the same opportunities as their hearing siblings and are expected to do far more of the household chores. In some homes where parents cannot pay for the furtherance of the education of their deaf daughters they keep them at home year after year. Then they come out into the world with only a tiny residual recollection of sign language, or with none at all. Some deaf children remain illiterate, not knowing anything beyond their own names.
I was lucky because I was able to continue my education, even after I had dropped out of secondary school. I wrote to Dr. Andrew Foster, the black American missionary who was the pioneer of deaf education in Africa, who invited me to study in Nigeria. And so on 1 April 1987 I left Niger for Nigeria.
At the Christian Centre For the Deaf, I saw sign language for the first time. The students, here all looked happy and I began a new life. I managed to master sign language and gradually learnt to accept my hearing problem. I was one of the few students there with a higher level of residual hearing. I felt happier and more at home here than I had ever felt in the difficult hearing world in Niger.
Dr. Andrew Foster, himself, came to the centre several months later. He summoned me to his office one day and asked me to teach English to my deaf colleagues from other French speaking African Countries whose command of English was not so good. He showed me how to teach and ever since I have been in the practice of teaching. I have acquired some skill and experience.
Sadly, Dr. Andrew Foster died on 7th December 1987 in a plane crash somewhere between Central and South Africa. However he pioneered the campaign for the promotion of the education of the deaf in Nigeria and set a very practical example for his host African countries by establishing schools for the deaf across Africa.
Ever since then, Nigeria has produced a sizeable number of educated deaf persons. There are special primary and secondary schools specifically set up for them, along with Federal Colleges for the provision of Special Education. The best-known Special Education College in western Nigeria is the Federal College of Education (Special) in Oyo (Oyo State). Hundreds of deaf and non-deaf persons have graduated from this college to become teachers of deaf people. The universities of Ibadan (Oyo State) and Jos (Plateau State) provide Special Education course, and promote with committed urgency the inalienable right of the education of the deaf and other disabled persons.
Other organisations that help deaf people are the Christian ministries of the deaf and associations of the deaf which exist in different regions of Nigeria.
Future of deaf people in Nigeria
The future of deaf people in Nigeria is dependent on their social and economic empowerment, integration and emancipation. We need to be soundly educated and trained as we grow up, so we can take our destinies in our own hands. Public schools for the deaf should be empowered and equipped with proficient and diligent staff. Non-governmental Organizations with educational programs for the deaf should be encouraged and supported with relevant resources to enable them to render excellent services to the deaf in rural and urban areas.
I think that we should not be daunted by the challenges when we look at how we can achieve our aims but rather we should focus on what we can accomplish by taking action now!
My own childhood has taught me how hard it is for deaf children to succeed in school and in life, but it has also shown me that there are homes where deaf people are greatly loved and respected and provided for by their parents and relations. Opportunities are created or sought for them to improve their education and economic life. These privileged deaf people are often able to contribute to family and society, sometimes helping and supporting their parents, sisters and brothers in the same way that they were helped.
I was born in the Republic of Niger in French–speaking West Africa. Yali Diouf Papa (my father) married three other wives and had twelve children, among whom I stand 4th, but I am the 2nd child among my mother’s eight children. My mother told me that when I was born, she was taken ill and stayed in hospital for up to one year. I am not told the kind of illness she suffered from. But as I grew up, I became aware that my dad didn’t love me much. I often heard insulting words being thrown at me. What accounted for this cannot be separated from the fact that I didn’t display smartness, intelligence or perhaps common sense as a child. The word I used to be familiar with when translated from the vernacular is: “STUPID!”
I was a slow learner. Consequently I earned serious canings, both in school, and at home. I failed to pass the Primary School Leaving Examination. So instead of me spending the customary six years in primary school, I spent eleven long years there. I dropped out of school and my dad began to make plans to enlist me in the army. But one day the principal of the town’s only secondary school said something that indicated his desire for me to go back to school; he said he wanted to see my father. I informed my dad, and both men met. What happened next was that I found myself again in Primary 6 for the fourth time.
During my primary school years, I carried a very tiny fluctuating tinge of deafness as well as being a stammerer, though as we grew older the stammering bouts in my speech gradually disappeared.
As a teenager, when I was spoken to, I would request a repetition of the spoken words. Other times it would happen that though I heard, I would not respond immediately until the words were repeated violently and loudly, or until after they had said, “Look, we are speaking to him, but he wont hear!” One day my mother took me through a dictation. As she corrected the work, she commented that this and that word was misspelled because of “inattention” on my part.
Nevertheless, with each primary class repeated, I gradually began to rise from the bottom of the ladder at school. However the suspected hearing deficiency was determined to stay and grow, even though it was not confirmed medically until I was between nineteen and twenty years of age.
A year after my return to school, I finally passed the examinations. I finished primary school late and started secondary school late. In secondary school I did well in geography, history, science, and French, but trouble started again when I came to learn English which is taught as a third language in secondary schools in Niger. My inability to understand this strange foreign language with its strangely written and pronounced words made me a laughing stock among the other students.
The hearing problem was still there, but it didn't prevent me from learning the vernacular and French languages and to hear other languages spoken. I was privileged not to be pre-lingually deaf, which, has prevented many deaf people from developing any language skills. Often deaf people have problems with grammar, word and sentence building.
Despite my problems, I was determined to fight off the stigma and embarrassment of being the class's laughing stock, so one day I picked up my English notebook and read and memorized hard. I got the spirit of the English language. After that, my scores were amongst the best. By the time I left secondary school, English language became my best subject.
It was in my third year in secondary school that the hidden hearing problem suddenly become more manifest and more pronounced. I was then 19 years of age. I found myself unable to follow teachers when they discoursed on subjects. I would strain my ears in desperation to hear what they taught. The efforts to hear were to no avail as I missed much of what they said or dictated. At the same time my eye vision became dim or blurred. I saw line upon line of words scribbled on the blackboard, but I could not see well enough to read and take notes unless I went closer to the board.
No illness or any other kind of physical malaise preceded this partial deafness and short-sightedness; it was a complete surprise! I felt despair, anger, and discouragement and became much less interested in school. I became so desperate that I wanted to kill myself, but after a failed attempt, I resolved to live. There would be hope! It was also at this time, that I decided to abandon my families’ Muslim faith in favour of Christianity. This caused a lot of problems within my family – but I was obstinate!
Although the deafness disarmed me on many fronts, I also felt that it had armed me with new instincts of courage, determination, boldness, and confidence on other fronts. I wanted to become a public figure and longed to become a president, but of course that was impossible as opportunities for college and university education were destroyed by my hearing impairment.
When I told my mother about my hearing and sight problems, she was upset. My father told me to keep cool and they did not take any action as it was assumed that I might get over the burden. I also think that perhaps the fact that they could not afford treatment for me prevented them from taking action. Niger is not a developed country and treatment abroad is very expensive. My English teacher, a Ghanaian, asked me to go to the Ghana School for the Deaf and I once saw this nice teacher with my father in our house, but I was never allowed to go and a further opportunity to extend my education was missed.
Meanwhile I became increasingly emotionally troubled and I often didn’t go to school, preferring to read alone in the house or sing songs using old tins as musical instruments.
I was taken to see an audiologist in the only national hospital in the capital city. The audiologist looked like a Chinese or Japanese doctor. This man tested my ears for several hours. He prescribed injections, which my mum, as a nurse administered at home. After the medication, the level of hearing impairment considerably dropped but was not completely annihilated and there was nothing else the doctor could do.
I can hear but I cannot understand speech. I have had ringing, roaring and screeching noises in my ears and sometimes they itch. I can hear the television, the radio, the twitters of birds, and the roars of engines and thunder. I do as well hear the chatter of children, the barks of dogs, bleating of goats, and the shuffling of feet. However, when it comes to understanding spoken speech I have a hard time trying to make out what is spoken unless people repeat the words. However this has often been awkward and embarrassing as people around have their attention drawn toward me. So I often request my speaker to jot down his/her words in order to save time and public embarrassment.
My ability to speak almost perfectly has often tempted people into believing that I can understand them, however sometimes I pretend not to be able to speak so that they have to write everything down! Another effective strategy is to speak but then be quick to indicate, while receiving answers in form of spoken speech, that I am a little deaf. Here improvised signs, a pantomime of speech, are employed for more effective communication.
When words are spoken to me, one at a time, with an interval of few seconds in-between and in a raised tone, I look at the lips of the person speaking. Then I can know the words on the lips, and also hear the words and how they are pronounced. I later mimic the pronunciation in self-training. This way I have learnt to pronounce English words.
My story is typical, but I was lucky to see an audiologist and to have the chance to begin my education. Many parents in West Africa don’t understand the special needs of their deaf children. Sometimes deaf children do not receive the same opportunities as their hearing siblings and are expected to do far more of the household chores. In some homes where parents cannot pay for the furtherance of the education of their deaf daughters they keep them at home year after year. Then they come out into the world with only a tiny residual recollection of sign language, or with none at all. Some deaf children remain illiterate, not knowing anything beyond their own names.
I was lucky because I was able to continue my education, even after I had dropped out of secondary school. I wrote to Dr. Andrew Foster, the black American missionary who was the pioneer of deaf education in Africa, who invited me to study in Nigeria. And so on 1 April 1987 I left Niger for Nigeria.
At the Christian Centre For the Deaf, I saw sign language for the first time. The students, here all looked happy and I began a new life. I managed to master sign language and gradually learnt to accept my hearing problem. I was one of the few students there with a higher level of residual hearing. I felt happier and more at home here than I had ever felt in the difficult hearing world in Niger.
Dr. Andrew Foster, himself, came to the centre several months later. He summoned me to his office one day and asked me to teach English to my deaf colleagues from other French speaking African Countries whose command of English was not so good. He showed me how to teach and ever since I have been in the practice of teaching. I have acquired some skill and experience.
Sadly, Dr. Andrew Foster died on 7th December 1987 in a plane crash somewhere between Central and South Africa. However he pioneered the campaign for the promotion of the education of the deaf in Nigeria and set a very practical example for his host African countries by establishing schools for the deaf across Africa.
Ever since then, Nigeria has produced a sizeable number of educated deaf persons. There are special primary and secondary schools specifically set up for them, along with Federal Colleges for the provision of Special Education. The best-known Special Education College in western Nigeria is the Federal College of Education (Special) in Oyo (Oyo State). Hundreds of deaf and non-deaf persons have graduated from this college to become teachers of deaf people. The universities of Ibadan (Oyo State) and Jos (Plateau State) provide Special Education course, and promote with committed urgency the inalienable right of the education of the deaf and other disabled persons.
Other organisations that help deaf people are the Christian ministries of the deaf and associations of the deaf which exist in different regions of Nigeria.
Future of deaf people in Nigeria
The future of deaf people in Nigeria is dependent on their social and economic empowerment, integration and emancipation. We need to be soundly educated and trained as we grow up, so we can take our destinies in our own hands. Public schools for the deaf should be empowered and equipped with proficient and diligent staff. Non-governmental Organizations with educational programs for the deaf should be encouraged and supported with relevant resources to enable them to render excellent services to the deaf in rural and urban areas.
I think that we should not be daunted by the challenges when we look at how we can achieve our aims but rather we should focus on what we can accomplish by taking action now!
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