I have accepted my daughter's deafness, my family hasn't

When Yvonne Busolo welcomed her daughter five years ago, she didn’t anticipate that she will raise a child with special needs.

When her daughter Laura was six months, she took her for a hearing test.

She was told the child was okay and never thought at some point she would be told that her daughter could not hear.

As days went by, she discovered Laura could not communicate well like her peers, but she assumed it was a speech delay because she would respond whenever they called her.

Laura is five years old. She can speak a few basic words like mom, yes and no.

When she is sent to pick something, the instructions are always accompanied by gestures for her to understand what exactly her mother wants.

“I have been wondering what to do with her because the hearing test said she could hear but now she cannot hear well,” Busolo says.

“We recently did three hearing tests from three different hospitals because we doubted the first hospital so we did a second and third one and all of them said she could not hear.” 

Laura is outgoing. She loves playing with her mates.

Busolo has taken the initiative of telling other kids to play with her despite having a speech problem.

Sometimes when she goes with Laura to the shop and has to buy her something, she has to point to the various goods to help her make a choice.

The shopkeepers would sometime question Laura's ability to hear and talk, something that would make Busolo cry.

She tried speech therapy, but now says it is not an option due to the high-cost requirement that comes with it.

“We have done speech therapy for like three months consecutively but it hasn’t helped anything. It is too expensive so I gave up on it,” she says.

“We used to see a private doctor, it is Sh4500 per session and we were to do two sessions a week but now I could not afford Sh9,000 every week so we used to do one every week.”

Busolo got to learn of Lugha Ishara, an organisation that champions disability inclusion where she would interact with parents of deaf children, listen to their stories and got encouraged by their journey.

Lugha Ishara tackles language deprivation in deaf children by offering early intervention before a child's brain loses the plasticity to acquire language.

Despite her having accepted that her daughter is deaf and needs special care and attention, her family is yet to accept that.

Currently, Laura is in a regular school. She plans to admit her to a deaf school next year but her family thinks otherwise. They still feel she is not deaf hence no need to join a special school.

However, her biggest headache is getting a school nearby. Busolo stays in Nairobi’s Fedha estate. The only nearby school is Agha Khan in Parklands.

She wishes that the government sets up deaf units in all regular schools to accommodate learners with special needs.

“The government doesn’t have to build deaf schools, we have the regular schools so we can have a deaf unit within the school so that even the deaf kids can feel included in the society,”

Kenya on Thursday joined the rest of the world in commemorating the International Week of Deaf People that runs from September 19 to 25.

The theme for this year is “Building Inclusive Communities for All”.

It is an initiative of the World Federation of the Deaf and was first launched in 1958 in Rome, Italy, to commemorate the month when the first World Congress of the WFD was held.

Nancy Maina, CEO and Founder of Lugha Ishara says the facility helps parents receive counselling and therapy as their children enjoy being in a fully inclusive space.

Sheila Lutta, a senior Education Officer at the Special Needs Directorate, Ministry of Education, says Kenyan Sign Language will now be more accessible to the wider community with the new Competency-Based Curriculum, as it will be a selective subject like many others.

Edited by Kiilu Damaris