Friends of the Handicapped & Cape Deaf – June 17 – 19

We arrived late at night in Cape Coast, dropped off by a Trotro, and were met by Kofi, the director of Friends of the Handicapped (FHI) and three staff members of Cape Deaf, one of the local deaf school in the Central Region that FHI sponsors students to attend.  Although it was after 8pm, when we walked by the classrooms, the students were still in them, participating in extra study sessions that enables them to excel at their studies.  We then met the support staff that helps support the school’s daily operations.  It is this family of Head Mistress Barbara that not only takes care of the school and its needs, but also adopts children that can’t be supported by their parents, but need the education of the school and will not thrive in a normal orphanage situation.  We immediately heard about the needs of the school and how the small amount of government funding they receive only pays for salaries of teachers and buildings, but does not cover the costs of the students that attend the school, which leaves many deaf and blind at home in their villages without education, communication, and many times the proper care.  After hearing about the lack of adequate funding, Kofi wanted to show us the living conditions of the children at the school so we could see for ourselves the needs of the students.  We were taken to the girls and boys dormitories to see that they were roughly 20’ x 50’ and were housing roughly 60 students, some 2 to a single bunk bed.  Despite realizing that these conditions were not ideal for the students, the alternative is that these children would be left in their villages with no education, and in some cases, without the proper food or communication necessary for their development.  Therefore, Cape Deaf does what it can, with the resources it has available, in order to make sure that every blind and hearing impaired child in its region will receive the right to an education with the dream of ending the marginalization of handicapped people in Ghana.

The next day included a tour of the campus, starting with an introduction to all the students during an assembly after worship in the dining hall.  We were able to visit the vocational center, which the government is building, but the school is dependent on outside donations to fill the rooms with the proper equipment for the students, such as carpentry machines, computers for their computer lab, materials for their fashion design program, and many other things that would be needed before they would be able to be operational in their new building.   They would like to purchase materials and equipment that would allow their students to be able to generate income from their work, in order to make the vocational program sustainable and offer students more opportunities.  Next, we visited the classrooms, including the art department, where we found a deaf student diligently weaving a strip that would later be made into a beautiful garment that can be sold to visitors to help purchase new materials for the students.  The other classrooms included deaf teachers that were working with the students on traditional school subjects, along with career planning and computer training to enable them to find careers after they complete their studies at Cape Deaf.  The most interesting part of this visit was the computer training class, where the skills were being taught by drawing a computer screen and writing out instructions on the blackboard, without a single computer in the room.  I wondered how well the students would be able to translate the skills from the blackboard to a real computer when they were finally in front of one.

After classrooms, we were escorted to the dining hall again, where we witnessed the most amazing cultural troop performance I have ever experienced.  We were greeted with drums being played by some of the blind students in the school.  Although that was amazing enough, deaf dancers came out and performed regional traditional dances with only the beating of the large drums to cue their movements.  My colleague and I were led to the dance floor to dance jumping over moving bamboo sticks to the rhythm, and despite our ability to hear, we failed miserably at the dances they were doing perfectly without hearing the music.  It is amazing what people with handicaps, such as hearing and sight loss can accomplish with the proper teaching and resources.  Nothing about these children is lacking or incapable.  In fact, it is their capabilities that allow them to overcome all barriers to be successful.

The rest of our tour included a visit to the agricultural program and unit for the blind.  The fully functioning farm teaches the skills that many of these children do not learn at home in their villages due to living at the school full-time, so they will be very capable of farming when/if they return.  The unit for the blind is basically a Braille training program that teaches blind children to read and write in Braille so they will be able to communicate in the inclusion program at the local school (with the assistance of a resource teacher that travels to the school with them).  The most interesting technology that I was not aware of is the computer program that allows normal documents to be scanned in and Braille documents to be created for the children to read (which had been donated to them).  This not only saves the teachers’ time translating lessons for the students, but also gives them access to many more documents to be included in their teaching.  Although the main mission for the students is to learn Braille, English and arithmetic lessons were still being taught, as not to waste a single day’s learning opportunities.  Although this unit is learning with the assistance of some technology, I couldn’t help but realize how much more they could gain from some additional blind-specific technology resources.

All in all, our visit was truly insightful.  Cape Deaf, with the support of FHI is changing the world for the deaf and blind in the Central Region in Ghana.  Because both of my parents are deaf and I have been involved with a deaf school in the US since I was born, I could see the amazing things that were being done for these students.  It is with the generosity of donors that these students can go into the world to create positive lives for themselves and their families, and maybe change the perception of the Ghanaian people so the generations that come after them won’t have to struggle as hard to gain the education they need to be successful in moving Ghana to become a place where they can thrive.