People of the Hypocrisy

Last year, there was an event in Tamale when the 1^st term was approaching to the end, and all children of our school were invited for it. Our destination was a hospital and when I arrived there, I saw our children sitting on chairs in white tents and several white people working in a tent, and when I entered the tent, I realized that they were Audiologists, fitting “hearing aid”. It was the international NGO called “Starkey” that donated hearing aids to the deaf in developing countries.

According to a staff, they stay in Ghana for a week as a part of African tour which lasts about half a year with funds from governments, companies, donations Starkey gets. So people in developed countries would appreciate their job and they also enjoy such good voices from people in “developed” countries. What they are doing seemingly nice, but the reality is not simple like that. In my class I teach that software needs hardware and vice versa; if you don’t have hardware, you can’t use software; if you don’t have software, you can’t use hardware. This is essential. So what is hardware and software for hearing aid? Hearing aid is hardware and training to speak and hear is software.

The problem is that they only give hardware. The staff explained that to my surprise they invite more than 300 people a day. And I said, “Wow, so many people. Some of them would profit from hearing aid”, and he answered, “Yeah, a lot of them”. Um?! A lot of them?! I said “some”. What did he mean by a lot of “them”? “Them” means a lot of people in his carrier as an audiologist? Or a lot of students in my school? And I gave the next question, “So how do you train students to speak and hear?” He said, “It’s teachers’ job!” I said, “So how do you train teachers?” He pointed a building to go and when I enter, Ghanaian staffs were teaching maintenance of hearing aid. ?! I asked  “How to speak and hear?” Did he misunderstand? No way, he knew that training was the most important and difficult thing to use hearing aid. I do admire what they’re doing, but they don’t either supply software, or instruct teachers. Isn’t that irresponsible? This brought a mess in my daily routine.

Anyway I had to supply software to my students in my class and out of class. But the term was ending and I had many things left to teach in the last 2 weeks. It was very confusing. When attendance, I spared time to call names with voice and taught greetings “Good morning”, “How are you?”, “My name is…” I always lost 10 or 15 minutes in my class, which are 20 or 25% of class time, and I always prepared music when they worked on practical lesson. However in spite of my efforts, the number of using hearing aid reduced little by little. After 1 week, it was half; after 2 weeks, just 3 students in a class, and in my last lesson, O, ZERO. No training, no profit; without profit, students don’t use it. And what’s worse, some students complained that hearing aid didn’t fit from the beginning and now painful . Who would use it? This result is just predictable. He said “A lot of them”, so he would’ve meant “a lot of people in my 20 years of work as an audiologist”. In my observation,  “some of them” would profit from it. So are they professional? Isn’t that irresponsible? 

They know people don’t use hearing aids without software, that’s why they invite so many people for an excuse and make tours to escape from their responsibility. This is the trick. And they don’t spend any money, but get salary and good reputations in both developed and developing countries, What a nice business! It’s an example of actual activity of NGO in the name of “International Development”. However one day some students yelled to me “Daigo!!” with their voices and I felt “My deaf children call my name! What a nice gift!” Their hypocrisy sometimes helps other people:)