Miss-Delectable
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Not Falling on Deaf Ears - Tonic
When American students with hearing loss visited a school for the deaf in Iquitos, Peru, their working field trip turned into a mission.
The Efata School for the Deaf in Iquitos, Peru could easily be mistaken for a school in a ghost town. The three classrooms behind concrete walls layered in broken glass to keep out intruders are rundown and were practically abandoned by the missionaries who started the facility in the eighties. But the ethereal quality also exists because the students they teach, 15 boys and girls who are profoundly deaf, are essentially ghosts in this city where the deaf are routinely ignored, shunned and abused.
Efata was founded by Christian missionaries in the isolated Amazon port city of Iquitos more than twenty years ago. By the time Pastor Abraham Cenepo took over the school in 2001 the missionaries continued to provide a modicum of funding, but had all but pulled out their active involvement in the program. Cenepo had been teaching himself sign language since he was a teenager and when he happened upon Efata, he saw it was sorely lacking for leadership.
He was willing to provide it because no one else would.
When he met and eventually married his wife Patsy Perez (below, right) seven years ago, she didn’t know any sign language, but she was willing to learn and she essentially took on Abraham’s dream of creating a better life for Iquitos’ deaf students as her own.
“Now I am better than him,” laughs the pretty and petite 24-year old.
Patsy and Abraham carry much of the burden for teaching the 15 students all aspects of elementary education including math, writing and skill-building. But after the elementary curriculum is complete, there is nowhere else for a student with hearing loss to move forward in Iquitos, unless they want to be injected into the mainstream population. The Peruvian government recently passed a new law that will place students with disabilities in mainstream schools, but hasn't put in place any measures to provide extra assistance in the mainstream classrooms.
“The deaf kids sit in a classroom surrounded by hearing kids with no interpreters and no idea what is going on,” Patsy explained.
The nearest secondary school for the deaf is in Chicayo, which is on the Pacific coast hundreds of miles away. Since the only way out of Iquitos is by boat or plane, it is a long or alternately prohibitively expensive journey.
Lorena Davila (bottom, right), 16, had an opportunity to travel to Chicayo to study but her strict father said that he didn’t feel comfortable with his daughter traveling so far on her own. So now even though Lorena’s school work is finished at Efata, she stays on, along with 19-year old Eddy Rubio, helping the younger kids and just trying to soak in any learning she can from Patsy and Abraham. If Eddy or Lorena leave Efata, they lose any chance at being around people who will try to communicate with them. Because she has found a community of people who care about her, Lorena is willing to re-read the elementary lessons each year, even though she scribbles poetry in her notebook at a level far beyond a high school student.
Earlier this year Patsy and Abraham were joined by an American Fulbright scholar Sara Goico (at left), 22, a native of West Hartford, Connecticut who has been taking classes with the American School for the deaf since high school. The bubbly blonde student's arrival was a huge relief for the couple who have had trouble recruiting sign language proficient teachers. The few instructors who are trained in sign language in the capital city of Lima are loath give up the comforts of the metropolis for the backwaters of Iquitos.
Goico is currently pursuing a PhD from the University of California focusing on Deaf Education in Latin America. She was stationed in Iquitos unexpectedly and, after reading a report on deaf education in Peru that mentioned Efata, she just showed up at the school and asked to be a part of their program. She was immediately brought into the fold as the third full-time instructor and welcomed into Patsy and Abraham’s family.
According to local physician Dr. Linnea Smith, an American who has been working in a clinic on the banks of the Amazon for more than 20 years, the government has a laissez-faire attitude towards the deaf.
“A couple of years ago the government asked me to test for hearing loss in my community,” Smith explained. “I said to them if I test what will you do about it? Create schools? Get them hearing aids? They said they weren’t going to do anything. They just wanted to know.”
The Efata school receives no funding from the government and relies only on funding from charitable organizations in the United States. They can operate the school on less than $5 USD a day.
“Lately with the recession in the US, there has been even less funding,” Patsy explained. “And the government definitely is not interested in helping us.”
Nor are the children’s families interested in helping the school or their disabled children individually. Goico says it isn’t a function of outward neglect, but rather a need to tend to the many other children in a family who have the capacity to generate income for the family later in their lives. It's survival of the fittest at its very worst.
“Because the deaf kids are given no educational opportunities, they can’t work. Many of them end up begging on the streets. The girls especially end up thrown out on their own. They become pregnant or contract AIDS because they are easy targets for rape. Some of them are as young as 13 or 14. They can’t tell anyone what happened to them,” Goico explained.
The school recently held a workshop to teach parents how to use sign language.
No one showed up.
Parents have asked Patsy and Abraham to just take their children for good so that they don’t have to shoulder the burden. The couple says they would if they had the resources, but they have two kids under the age of three themselves and already pour everything they have into keeping the school going at the most basic level of operations.
On the last day of their expedition to the Peruvian Amazon, a group of American students of mixed hearing abilities from the Hear the World organization visited Efata and their eyes were opened to the challenges facing children with hearing disabilities outside of the United States. These American students have it pretty good. The ones who are deaf have long had the ability, through hearing aids or cochlear implants, to hear at a normal level.
They were greeted by Efata’s girls and effusively hugged and kissed by the Peruvian students who don’t normally have visitors who are excited to see where they learn and to hear about their lives. Most people in Iquitos would rather forget they exist so having people visit who wanted to talk to them was like a holiday.
“After meeting the kids at Efata, I feel so fortunate to have been born in the United States to a family that could provide devices that allow me to hear,” said 17-year-old Gary Quenzer who has suffered from profound hearing loss since infancy. “I have been given opportunities to learn and these kids have been given no opportunities. They can’t even go to secondary school. No one cares about them. It’s one of the saddest things I have ever seen.”
Zoe Gershuny, 18, found an even more personal connection to the kids in the school. They echoed what her life could have been like if not for a very fortunate twist of fate. Zoe was adopted by an American family as a baby from China. The Chinese adoption agency did not know she was deaf and if they had, she believes they would not have approved her adoption.
“I was adopted by a wonderful family who has given me every opportunity. I don’t know if that would have happened in China. These kids showed me what life could have been like,” Gershuny said.
The group individually and collectively vowed to take on Efata as a project once they return to the United States, brainstorming projects both small and large which varied from providing the deaf students with t-shirts that would raise the visibility of the school and their self-esteem to raising funds to place more sign language proficient teachers into the school.
Hear the World ambassador, Bill Barkeley, a blind and deaf adventurer and inspirational speaker who led the Amazon trip is working on a proposal for the organization to help fund construction at Efata, as well as create a workshop where the students can produce something for their community that will make them self-sustaining.
rmal">“It was sobering to realize the sense of social isolation from those kids within their own families. How do you build a sense of community when community isn’t there? Our goal is to get them on a path to creating that sense of community,” Barkeley said. “The small steps are what will go a long way.”
When American students with hearing loss visited a school for the deaf in Iquitos, Peru, their working field trip turned into a mission.
The Efata School for the Deaf in Iquitos, Peru could easily be mistaken for a school in a ghost town. The three classrooms behind concrete walls layered in broken glass to keep out intruders are rundown and were practically abandoned by the missionaries who started the facility in the eighties. But the ethereal quality also exists because the students they teach, 15 boys and girls who are profoundly deaf, are essentially ghosts in this city where the deaf are routinely ignored, shunned and abused.
Efata was founded by Christian missionaries in the isolated Amazon port city of Iquitos more than twenty years ago. By the time Pastor Abraham Cenepo took over the school in 2001 the missionaries continued to provide a modicum of funding, but had all but pulled out their active involvement in the program. Cenepo had been teaching himself sign language since he was a teenager and when he happened upon Efata, he saw it was sorely lacking for leadership.
He was willing to provide it because no one else would.
When he met and eventually married his wife Patsy Perez (below, right) seven years ago, she didn’t know any sign language, but she was willing to learn and she essentially took on Abraham’s dream of creating a better life for Iquitos’ deaf students as her own.
“Now I am better than him,” laughs the pretty and petite 24-year old.
Patsy and Abraham carry much of the burden for teaching the 15 students all aspects of elementary education including math, writing and skill-building. But after the elementary curriculum is complete, there is nowhere else for a student with hearing loss to move forward in Iquitos, unless they want to be injected into the mainstream population. The Peruvian government recently passed a new law that will place students with disabilities in mainstream schools, but hasn't put in place any measures to provide extra assistance in the mainstream classrooms.
“The deaf kids sit in a classroom surrounded by hearing kids with no interpreters and no idea what is going on,” Patsy explained.
The nearest secondary school for the deaf is in Chicayo, which is on the Pacific coast hundreds of miles away. Since the only way out of Iquitos is by boat or plane, it is a long or alternately prohibitively expensive journey.
Lorena Davila (bottom, right), 16, had an opportunity to travel to Chicayo to study but her strict father said that he didn’t feel comfortable with his daughter traveling so far on her own. So now even though Lorena’s school work is finished at Efata, she stays on, along with 19-year old Eddy Rubio, helping the younger kids and just trying to soak in any learning she can from Patsy and Abraham. If Eddy or Lorena leave Efata, they lose any chance at being around people who will try to communicate with them. Because she has found a community of people who care about her, Lorena is willing to re-read the elementary lessons each year, even though she scribbles poetry in her notebook at a level far beyond a high school student.
Earlier this year Patsy and Abraham were joined by an American Fulbright scholar Sara Goico (at left), 22, a native of West Hartford, Connecticut who has been taking classes with the American School for the deaf since high school. The bubbly blonde student's arrival was a huge relief for the couple who have had trouble recruiting sign language proficient teachers. The few instructors who are trained in sign language in the capital city of Lima are loath give up the comforts of the metropolis for the backwaters of Iquitos.
Goico is currently pursuing a PhD from the University of California focusing on Deaf Education in Latin America. She was stationed in Iquitos unexpectedly and, after reading a report on deaf education in Peru that mentioned Efata, she just showed up at the school and asked to be a part of their program. She was immediately brought into the fold as the third full-time instructor and welcomed into Patsy and Abraham’s family.
According to local physician Dr. Linnea Smith, an American who has been working in a clinic on the banks of the Amazon for more than 20 years, the government has a laissez-faire attitude towards the deaf.
“A couple of years ago the government asked me to test for hearing loss in my community,” Smith explained. “I said to them if I test what will you do about it? Create schools? Get them hearing aids? They said they weren’t going to do anything. They just wanted to know.”
The Efata school receives no funding from the government and relies only on funding from charitable organizations in the United States. They can operate the school on less than $5 USD a day.
“Lately with the recession in the US, there has been even less funding,” Patsy explained. “And the government definitely is not interested in helping us.”
Nor are the children’s families interested in helping the school or their disabled children individually. Goico says it isn’t a function of outward neglect, but rather a need to tend to the many other children in a family who have the capacity to generate income for the family later in their lives. It's survival of the fittest at its very worst.
“Because the deaf kids are given no educational opportunities, they can’t work. Many of them end up begging on the streets. The girls especially end up thrown out on their own. They become pregnant or contract AIDS because they are easy targets for rape. Some of them are as young as 13 or 14. They can’t tell anyone what happened to them,” Goico explained.
The school recently held a workshop to teach parents how to use sign language.
No one showed up.
Parents have asked Patsy and Abraham to just take their children for good so that they don’t have to shoulder the burden. The couple says they would if they had the resources, but they have two kids under the age of three themselves and already pour everything they have into keeping the school going at the most basic level of operations.
On the last day of their expedition to the Peruvian Amazon, a group of American students of mixed hearing abilities from the Hear the World organization visited Efata and their eyes were opened to the challenges facing children with hearing disabilities outside of the United States. These American students have it pretty good. The ones who are deaf have long had the ability, through hearing aids or cochlear implants, to hear at a normal level.
They were greeted by Efata’s girls and effusively hugged and kissed by the Peruvian students who don’t normally have visitors who are excited to see where they learn and to hear about their lives. Most people in Iquitos would rather forget they exist so having people visit who wanted to talk to them was like a holiday.
“After meeting the kids at Efata, I feel so fortunate to have been born in the United States to a family that could provide devices that allow me to hear,” said 17-year-old Gary Quenzer who has suffered from profound hearing loss since infancy. “I have been given opportunities to learn and these kids have been given no opportunities. They can’t even go to secondary school. No one cares about them. It’s one of the saddest things I have ever seen.”
Zoe Gershuny, 18, found an even more personal connection to the kids in the school. They echoed what her life could have been like if not for a very fortunate twist of fate. Zoe was adopted by an American family as a baby from China. The Chinese adoption agency did not know she was deaf and if they had, she believes they would not have approved her adoption.
“I was adopted by a wonderful family who has given me every opportunity. I don’t know if that would have happened in China. These kids showed me what life could have been like,” Gershuny said.
The group individually and collectively vowed to take on Efata as a project once they return to the United States, brainstorming projects both small and large which varied from providing the deaf students with t-shirts that would raise the visibility of the school and their self-esteem to raising funds to place more sign language proficient teachers into the school.
Hear the World ambassador, Bill Barkeley, a blind and deaf adventurer and inspirational speaker who led the Amazon trip is working on a proposal for the organization to help fund construction at Efata, as well as create a workshop where the students can produce something for their community that will make them self-sustaining.
rmal">“It was sobering to realize the sense of social isolation from those kids within their own families. How do you build a sense of community when community isn’t there? Our goal is to get them on a path to creating that sense of community,” Barkeley said. “The small steps are what will go a long way.”