This was our first visit to this school and we were very impressed by what we saw. The headmisstress, Sarah, was an inspiring and very enthousiastic woman with a clear vision on education for children with a handicap, in this case deaf children. Besides teaching the students general subjects and sign language, the school also teaches vocational subjects. They are taught some practical skills like working with a knitting machine and a sewing machine, but also the students are taught to make shoes and fix bikes. This will make it easier for the them to find a job after finishing school.
The headmisstress was very happy with the waterpump that the Joanne Foudation sponsored and also with the gate that was built.
Sarah told us about witch doctors who advise the local people to kidnap children and sacrifice them to increase their prosperity. On the internet we found out that this is indeed common practice in Uganda. Sarah also told us that she was very worried about her deaf students who are often not able to shout for help when taken by people to be sacrificed. Her greatest wish was to have a fence around the schoolproperty to keep intruders out and the children safe.
We hope to be able to find enough sponsors to help us build the fence.
At this school we met Akilamu, a fifteen-year-old deaf boy. He had never been to school and he was a very neglected boy, he couldn’t look after himself at all. The school taught him some basis skills about how to take care of himself and we met a very happy boy. He is in “babyclass” at the moment and he is eager to learn. Communicating with him was difficult, we don’t “speak” signlanguage and he wanted to show and “tell” us a lot.