Rahina the Smile
“Did she write this? Wow, Rahinatu, that girl… And it is ‘English’
and it’s not just a copy, but she managed to express her feelings in words...”,
said Fauzia, English teacher for
JHS-2 and JHS-3. It was surprising news for me as well, because she couldn’t
write even her name in the task...
When I came to the school for the homestay
program, I was really surprised by English words written on blackboards in
classrooms. I had thought that the deaf were bad at English and students’
English ability was my anxiety, but when I saw many difficult words and complicated
English there, I was relieved a bit by that “fact”. In any event, my first job
was to check students’ English level. But I came to be more surprised by the
result of their English: they couldn’t write and read English. I wondered,
“What is this result?” It was quite simple that teachers just wrote words on
blackboards, following syllabus and students just took note without
understanding the meaning of words, following teachers who just followed
the syllabus. And when I gave a task to write about
“Introduce yourself”, some
students couldn’t write even “their name” because they didn’t understand the
meaning of “Introduce yourself”, which I explained in sign language. This is the
“fact” in the school.
For deaf people, English grammar is very
difficult because it’s abstract; they are not good at categorizing or grouping
things in one concept. For example, I, you, he, she, we, they, it are all
“Subject” but for them “I” is just “I”, they don’t understand why there is
another name “Subject”, which is the name of categorization, and “You”, “I” and
“He” are all different but they’re all the same “Subject”, it’s extremely
difficult for them to grasp the idea. And when they talk in sigh language, if
they say, “My” walk, or “Me” walk, both ways work in their conversation, and
rather in Ghanaian sign language “I (raise up little finger and tap chest with side
of index finger)” is a bit clumsy to do, so students don’t use “I” at all in
their talk. Moreover if you add past tense, future tense, adjective, adverb, and
conjugation of verbs and so on, their brain “freeze” like an old computer. However
English is very important for them because it’s a tool to study all subjects;
sign language is based on English, and it’ll be a weapon to survive in society
after school. And I teach my students: You are deaf, so you don’t have “voice”,
but with English and the Internet, you can have “voice” in society.
So I started an extra class for English
afternoon to improve their English ability. However it wasn’t very easy to call
students every afternoon; although I got permission from the school, it wasn’t
an “official” class, so I couldn’t force them to come everyday. At maximum 20
students participated it and at minimum 1 student came for it, and Rahinatu was one of students who participated
it. She is meek, modest, humble, and very “clumsy” and her smile is “perfectly
beautiful” because her heart is so pure and innocent. And she is very kind,
compassionated, sympathetic, especially when she takes care of small children,
the atmosphere is filled with kindness as if the whole scene was covered by
velvet veil of Love. Her smile is eternity. Yet she can’t survive in society only
with her beautiful smile and needs to get weapons. So I always called her for
the extra class and she tried to attend it.
As a mid-term test, I gave JHS students a
task of essay: “A letter to a Japanese friend”, in which they wrote about
themselves, Ghana , and Japan
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