Miss-Delectable
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Society: Deaf and desperate
It is Saturday morning. The location is Mountain Top Beauty Parlour, a hair and beauty salon for the high-flyers of Nyeri. As happens in any such outlet, Saturday is the busiest day for beauticians and hairdressers. Our mission at the salon is not to have our hair done, to make up our faces, or to clean up like the clients already present. We are here specifically to meet two hairdressers who are a constant attraction to clients and passers-by.
When we first heard that two deaf hair and beauty specialists worked at the facility, we were curious. Just how can one do this job, we wondered, considering that the profession calls for continuous interaction with clients for feedback? As we were to discover, Juliah Waithera and Joyce Wamuyu are a living testimony to the old saying: disability is not inability.
To the JWs — notice that their names all start with a J (for the first name) and a W (for the maiden name) — the sense of hearing may well be overrated. Wamuyu, who is now 30 and is a mother of a two year old, is on the road to becoming a top hairdresser. She explains that she started toying with hair when she was five years old.
The then little girl, who did not have many friends because she could neither hear nor speak, spent her time practising, not on human hair but on the closest available hair-like item: grass. Of course, her mother was her friend and she supported little Wamuyu. While the mother, a peasant farmer, worked at the farm, the girl knelt on the ground and carefully twisting together blades of grass.
Desperate search for a job
With nothing to distract her — she remained completely unaware of the sound of singing birds and the voices of nearby humans — she concentrated wholeheartedly on transforming the grass into a beauty. Today the young woman, who has had no formal training in hairdressing, and who studied only up to Class Eight at Tumutumu Special School for the Deaf, is an accomplished coiffeuse. It is her self-acquired skill (gained at the lawn) rather than training that earned her a job.
For her ability to be patient with children — Wamuyu is hardly affected by the grumbling and short-attention span of children — the mother of one now focuses exclusively on children’s hair. Young clients insist that Wamuyu makes their hair.
Although some potential customers look at her and her deaf colleague with suspicion and talk behind their backs, the hairdressers are unruffled.
Wamuyu and Waithera have been to many salons in search of jobs but, as they narrate, they were disgracefully turned away. The reason: they are deaf and some clients, apparently, will not want to deal with such people.
For Wamuyu, lady luck came knocking at her door three years ago. She explains through an interpreter: "I knew Mountain Top was a top salon, and I prayed to God that I would get this job." After job-hunting for more than four years, getting many rejections, sometimes even having to deal with a door slamming to her face, she was at last absorbed.
The proprietor of the salon, Mrs Doris Mwangi, who also runs a hair-training college, says that she felt for the deaf woman and decided to give her a chance. If Wamuyu failed to perform, she would be shown the door. After only two months following what seemed like a wild risk, clients started flowing in to ask for Wamuyu’s services.
In love with children
Today, three years later, her list of client keeps growing, and Mrs Mwangi is happy she signed on the deaf hairdresser.
Waithera’s inaccessible modelling dreams
For Waithera, who is good at written English, the hunt for a job would be an uphill task. After undergoing a two-year beauty and hairdressing course at Karatina’s Hair Plaza School of Hairdressing, she thought life would be a bed of roses. Although born a deaf child, she already knew where she wanted to work: the beauty industry.
It was after graduating with a diploma that she came to know the meaning of discrimination. No hair salon would hire her. Every day, she would hop from salon to salon around Nyeri and Karatina, but the response was the same: no vacancies. At our interview, aided by a sign-language interpreter, the petite good-looking girl says the job hunt compared to chasing a mirage.
Although she presented her high school and college certificates, potential employers appeared to struggle with the same dilemma: how would she communicate with clients?
Waithera says that, earlier, she had harboured grand dreams of becoming a model. A little exposure to social prejudice, she says, and it slowly occurred to her that her fantasy was shattered. Her trade-off vision was to work in the beauty industry. In spite of opposition from her family, she enrolled at the hair college. "I used to spend most of my time admiring myself in the mirror, and my joy is to make other people look good also," she says. "As a result, I enrolled for a course in beauty."
Still, she would have to use self-marketing magic, for she couldn’t speak and her potential employers could not quite decipher her signs. Two years on and she was still jobless. The last born in a family of six was on the verge of losing hope when, as a last resort, she presented her CV to the Director of Mountain Top Beauty Salon and proprietor of Mountain Top School of Hairdressing and Beauty.
Mrs Mwangi says she did not know what to tell the girl who looked miserably in need of a job. "I did not want to turn her away, but I could not imagine having two deaf beauticians in the salon," she says. "I told her to come after a week."
As asked, Waithera was back at Mrs Mwangi’s doorstep, her heart obviously pounding with apprehension. To her delight, the despairing girl was asked to begin immediately. Recalls Mrs Mwangi: "The girl was so grateful. I could see it in her eyes. She even tried to speak out her gratitude, but words could not come out. I also felt good."
For the last three months in which Waithera has been in employment, Mrs Mwangi reveals, "work is perfect and few customers have complained".
For Waithera, however, there are challenges. Some customers, doubting her abilities, will not allow her touch their head or face. Once they take the gamble and give her a chance, nevertheless, most return seeking her services again.
Waithera, who scored a mean grade of C+ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination at Rev Muhoro High School, which only admits deaf students, feels that physically challenged people are a forgotten lot in this country. She is however not alone; she takes consolation in the supportive presence of her colleague and partner in deafness, Joyce Wamuyu.
Having been in the business longer, Wamuyu, who has more experience at dealing with clients, has been showing Waithera the ropes, although, unlike Waithera, she has had no formal training in hairdressing.
Their employer, Mrs Mwangi, says some children who frequent her salon during weekends will not let anybody else touch their heads if Wamuyu is not around. "Some parents will make their children wait for hours, just to have Wamuyu plait their hair or even for a blow-dry, which could be done by anybody."
According to Mrs Mwangi, although the two are hearing-impaired and cannot communicate verbally, they are in many ways preferable to regular hairdressers and beauticians. "The only problem is that they can neither hear and nor can they talk," she says. "But they are good and one of them does my hair. I am proud of them."
Mrs Mwangi says Wamuyu is a fast learner who can do both hairdressing and also offers other beauty services.
Working at the large hair and beauty facility that has a total of 17 hairdressers, beauticians and cosmetologists, the JWs have won the acceptance and respect of their workmates. Often, when they cannot get through to a client, their regular colleagues help out.
It is Saturday morning. The location is Mountain Top Beauty Parlour, a hair and beauty salon for the high-flyers of Nyeri. As happens in any such outlet, Saturday is the busiest day for beauticians and hairdressers. Our mission at the salon is not to have our hair done, to make up our faces, or to clean up like the clients already present. We are here specifically to meet two hairdressers who are a constant attraction to clients and passers-by.
When we first heard that two deaf hair and beauty specialists worked at the facility, we were curious. Just how can one do this job, we wondered, considering that the profession calls for continuous interaction with clients for feedback? As we were to discover, Juliah Waithera and Joyce Wamuyu are a living testimony to the old saying: disability is not inability.
To the JWs — notice that their names all start with a J (for the first name) and a W (for the maiden name) — the sense of hearing may well be overrated. Wamuyu, who is now 30 and is a mother of a two year old, is on the road to becoming a top hairdresser. She explains that she started toying with hair when she was five years old.
The then little girl, who did not have many friends because she could neither hear nor speak, spent her time practising, not on human hair but on the closest available hair-like item: grass. Of course, her mother was her friend and she supported little Wamuyu. While the mother, a peasant farmer, worked at the farm, the girl knelt on the ground and carefully twisting together blades of grass.
Desperate search for a job
With nothing to distract her — she remained completely unaware of the sound of singing birds and the voices of nearby humans — she concentrated wholeheartedly on transforming the grass into a beauty. Today the young woman, who has had no formal training in hairdressing, and who studied only up to Class Eight at Tumutumu Special School for the Deaf, is an accomplished coiffeuse. It is her self-acquired skill (gained at the lawn) rather than training that earned her a job.
For her ability to be patient with children — Wamuyu is hardly affected by the grumbling and short-attention span of children — the mother of one now focuses exclusively on children’s hair. Young clients insist that Wamuyu makes their hair.
Although some potential customers look at her and her deaf colleague with suspicion and talk behind their backs, the hairdressers are unruffled.
Wamuyu and Waithera have been to many salons in search of jobs but, as they narrate, they were disgracefully turned away. The reason: they are deaf and some clients, apparently, will not want to deal with such people.
For Wamuyu, lady luck came knocking at her door three years ago. She explains through an interpreter: "I knew Mountain Top was a top salon, and I prayed to God that I would get this job." After job-hunting for more than four years, getting many rejections, sometimes even having to deal with a door slamming to her face, she was at last absorbed.
The proprietor of the salon, Mrs Doris Mwangi, who also runs a hair-training college, says that she felt for the deaf woman and decided to give her a chance. If Wamuyu failed to perform, she would be shown the door. After only two months following what seemed like a wild risk, clients started flowing in to ask for Wamuyu’s services.
In love with children
Today, three years later, her list of client keeps growing, and Mrs Mwangi is happy she signed on the deaf hairdresser.
Waithera’s inaccessible modelling dreams
For Waithera, who is good at written English, the hunt for a job would be an uphill task. After undergoing a two-year beauty and hairdressing course at Karatina’s Hair Plaza School of Hairdressing, she thought life would be a bed of roses. Although born a deaf child, she already knew where she wanted to work: the beauty industry.
It was after graduating with a diploma that she came to know the meaning of discrimination. No hair salon would hire her. Every day, she would hop from salon to salon around Nyeri and Karatina, but the response was the same: no vacancies. At our interview, aided by a sign-language interpreter, the petite good-looking girl says the job hunt compared to chasing a mirage.
Although she presented her high school and college certificates, potential employers appeared to struggle with the same dilemma: how would she communicate with clients?
Waithera says that, earlier, she had harboured grand dreams of becoming a model. A little exposure to social prejudice, she says, and it slowly occurred to her that her fantasy was shattered. Her trade-off vision was to work in the beauty industry. In spite of opposition from her family, she enrolled at the hair college. "I used to spend most of my time admiring myself in the mirror, and my joy is to make other people look good also," she says. "As a result, I enrolled for a course in beauty."
Still, she would have to use self-marketing magic, for she couldn’t speak and her potential employers could not quite decipher her signs. Two years on and she was still jobless. The last born in a family of six was on the verge of losing hope when, as a last resort, she presented her CV to the Director of Mountain Top Beauty Salon and proprietor of Mountain Top School of Hairdressing and Beauty.
Mrs Mwangi says she did not know what to tell the girl who looked miserably in need of a job. "I did not want to turn her away, but I could not imagine having two deaf beauticians in the salon," she says. "I told her to come after a week."
As asked, Waithera was back at Mrs Mwangi’s doorstep, her heart obviously pounding with apprehension. To her delight, the despairing girl was asked to begin immediately. Recalls Mrs Mwangi: "The girl was so grateful. I could see it in her eyes. She even tried to speak out her gratitude, but words could not come out. I also felt good."
For the last three months in which Waithera has been in employment, Mrs Mwangi reveals, "work is perfect and few customers have complained".
For Waithera, however, there are challenges. Some customers, doubting her abilities, will not allow her touch their head or face. Once they take the gamble and give her a chance, nevertheless, most return seeking her services again.
Waithera, who scored a mean grade of C+ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination at Rev Muhoro High School, which only admits deaf students, feels that physically challenged people are a forgotten lot in this country. She is however not alone; she takes consolation in the supportive presence of her colleague and partner in deafness, Joyce Wamuyu.
Having been in the business longer, Wamuyu, who has more experience at dealing with clients, has been showing Waithera the ropes, although, unlike Waithera, she has had no formal training in hairdressing.
Their employer, Mrs Mwangi, says some children who frequent her salon during weekends will not let anybody else touch their heads if Wamuyu is not around. "Some parents will make their children wait for hours, just to have Wamuyu plait their hair or even for a blow-dry, which could be done by anybody."
According to Mrs Mwangi, although the two are hearing-impaired and cannot communicate verbally, they are in many ways preferable to regular hairdressers and beauticians. "The only problem is that they can neither hear and nor can they talk," she says. "But they are good and one of them does my hair. I am proud of them."
Mrs Mwangi says Wamuyu is a fast learner who can do both hairdressing and also offers other beauty services.
Working at the large hair and beauty facility that has a total of 17 hairdressers, beauticians and cosmetologists, the JWs have won the acceptance and respect of their workmates. Often, when they cannot get through to a client, their regular colleagues help out.