Before we went to Bahir Dar, a first grade teacher at the local primary school asked if I could help with a boy he had in the class with a hearing impairment.
He is 12 years old and completely lost his hearing due to an illness when he was 7 years old.
I met him today and he seems quite bright and has some lip-reading ability. He can count and relate numbers of objects to digits. He can copy Latin/Roman letters and fidel (Amharic writing) but does not know the alphabet and cannot read. (Remember, even though he is 12, he has only just started school so is in Grade 1 where most of the class are at the alphabet learning / number learning stage.)
I found it quite easy communicating with him as I am now very used to communicating with children who do not understand English. I use lots of actions and gestures as it is with children who only understand Amharic, so it actually wasn’t that different communicating with someone who can’t hear.
I also met his father and we agreed to work on some flash cards and a mat for his desk with some key words (in Amharic, pictorial form and English.)
Today, I managed to find the American Sign Language alphabet (one handed) on the net (it is possible sometimes!) and over about 30 minutes taught myself, so I can teach him and some of his friends now.
I’m not sure if there is a fidel sign language system – I have sent out some emails to find out. I would really like to help him, but my main problem is I have very limited Amharic and I could help much more if I was teaching English.
I think it’s really good that he is in a mainstream school but it will become more difficult if the teachers have no training and there is no support for him.
Anyway, together with a couple of teachers working with me and my neighbour’s son, I will work out a program to see what we can do to help.
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