The Sunday Mail
Dr Christine Peta : Disability Issues
Rudo bemoans the inability of health care staff to speak sign language and she argues that such inability is detrimental to the well being of deaf people.
“Nurses and doctors can’t speak sign language so they tell me nothing about the death of my two babies. I think doctors and nurses are just a bunch of uneducated people.”
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he international theme for the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) for September 2016 is “With sign language, I am equal”.
In line with that theme, I focus on Rudo’s story in this article. Rudo is deaf and partially blind.
The genesis of Rudo’s disability
Rudo is a 50-year-old woman who was born and raised by both her parents in her rural village in Murehwa, Zimbabwe.
She became deaf at the age of two in what was considered by her parents as a mysterious circumstance, mucus and pus started to ooze out of her nose and ears.
Rudo does not remember the hospital’s diagnosis but she remembers her mother telling her that the divinations of n’anga (traditional healers) were pointing at witchcraft.
Scarce facilities for the deaf
After four years of relentlessly and unsuccessfully searching for a cure from hospitals, religious prophets and traditional healers; Rudo’s parents decided to send her to school.
They enrolled her for Grade One at a school that had no facilities for deaf learners.
After a fortnight of attendance, her teacher asked her parents to withdraw her from the school as it had become apparent that she could not be integrated successfully into a school that was not offering sign language.
“I was six years old, my parents sent me to Loreto Mission in Gweru (about 350km from our home) which was run by the Roman Catholic Church, it was a school for deaf people.”
The beauty of sign language
Whilst in boarding school, Rudo started to learn sign language by imitating what the others were doing.
“When I got to the boarding school, I saw that people were talking with their hands. We started to laugh and have fun, I didn’t know that I was now learning what is called sign language.”
Rudo did well in primary school and successfully completed her Grade Seven at the age of thirteen.
Although she wanted to go to high school, she was told by her parents and teachers that it was not necessary because of her disability. They argued that higher education was meant for non-disabled people.
Sexual abuse
As a way of probably easing her parents of the “burden” of looking after a disabled child, Rudo was often sent to stay in different parts of the country with her aunts whilst her four brothers and three sisters remained at the family home.
However, during one of her visits, she met a non-disabled man who raped her when she was 16 years old.
The rape case went unreported because Rudo kept the incident to herself for fear of being reprimanded by her family. The rapist was her aunt’s close friend.
When love meets love
When Rudo reached the age of 35, she decided to join a Government program for the deaf which had been established in Murehwa.
Whilst there, she established an intimate relationship with Mafiyo, a deaf man of her age. She got pregnant at the age of 36.
The joy that never was
When Rudo started experiencing labour pains, she went to a rural hospital.
However, she encountered serious communication problems because none of the health care staffers could speak sign language.
“I could read the nurse’s lips and I could see that she was saying ‘Push! Push! Push!’ but I couldn’t tell her anything because she did not understand sign language,” she said.
Rudo blames the communication barrier for the resultant death of her baby girl during the child delivery process.
Another attempt
After losing her first child, Rudo got pregnant again the following year (1998).
However, when the pregnancy had reached full term, she decided to avoid the rural hospital and go to one of the hospitals in the city, believing that she would get better service.
She was surprised to find that even the health care staffers at the city hospital were both ignorant and insensitive to her disability and none of them could speak sign language.
Rudo believes that instead of helping her to deliver her baby successfully, healthcare staff saw an opportunity to turn her into a maternity ward “experiment” because of her disability.
“There was one senior doctor and eight student doctors, imagine all those people looking at my underneath at the same time, it was terrible. They were all wearing white waistcoats and they had notebooks and pens, I started to feel like they were making me an experiment because I am deaf. Again my baby died, it was a big baby boy — 3,5kgs. I think the baby died because these people could not speak sign language.”
“Uneducated” people
Rudo bemoans the inability of health care staff to speak sign language and she argues that such inability is detrimental to the well being of deaf people.
“Nurses and doctors can’t speak sign language so they tell me nothing about the death of my two babies. I think doctors and nurses are just a bunch of uneducated people.”
Angry, frustrated and devoid of a medical explanation of why her two babies died during the separate child delivery processes, Rudo was left with no choice but to conclude that doctors and nurses are “uneducated” people.
Double jeaopardy
Her marriage ended in divorce after her husband impregnated his mistress, a non-disabled woman who was renting a room behind their rented house.
“My husband said I was not giving him children because I am deaf, so he decided to move on with a non-disabled ‘small house’ who could give him children.”
At the time of the divorce, Rudo was 42 years old.
During that time, she began to lose her sight. She is now partially blind.
Life goes on
Over the years, Rudo has not been able to secure formal employment. She earns her living through selling mobile phone airtime, biscuits and sweets along Kaguvi Street in Harare’s city centre.
She also teaches sign language in the rare instances when she is invited to do so. Rudo is interested in securing formal employment if an opportunity arises.
“I am 50 years old and I have never been formally employed, I think employers think that deaf people are unable to work, but we can. I think they just don’t want to make an effort to speak to us in sign language.”
Talking to the deaf
Article 22 (3c) of the Zimbabwe Constitution (2013) encourages the use and development of forms of communication suitable for people with disabilities.
Dr Christine Peta is the first Zimbabwean to acquire a PhD in Disability Studies. Be part of international debate on how best to nurture a society which is more accessible, supportive and inclusive of disabled people. Partner with Disability Centre for Africa (DCFA): WhatsApp, 0773699229; Website, www.dcfafrica.com
