Miss-Delectable
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http://www.orovillemr.com/news/bayarea/ci_3822554
It was winter when Isidore Niyongabo arrived in Fremont a year and a half ago.
It was cold and lonely for the 24-year-old, who was used to the humid climate and genial atmosphere of his native Burundi, a small African country wedged between Uganda and Tanzania.
His experience is one shared by scores of international students trying to cope with a new culture and a foreign language. But in Isidore's case, there was one more element to the story. He is deaf.
Isidore is one of 11 international students enrolled in the Ohlone College Center for Deaf Studies. He came to Ohlone in January 2005 looking for educational opportunities his country cannot offer him, opportunities he intends to translate into changes for other deaf people in his homeland.
Burundi is a poor country, scarred by a decade of bloodshed that killed Isidore's father and forced his mother, three brothers and a sister into a refugee camp with hundreds of thousands of other Burundians. At least 200,000 died.
Isidore has learned to finesse many obstacles, but learning how to make friends among busy Americans scurrying about their business was not easy.
"My first semester was full of frustration, isolation and observing the new environment, culture and trying to find how to cope with this world," he wrote in an e-mail.
Isidore was 10 when he lost his hearing during a bout with meningitis, so he reads lips and has learned to communicate without using sign language.
Still, walking up to someone to start a conversation here isn't easy.
He had mastered enough English to communicate through writing notes, but "I guessed no one had time to stop and read what I wrote on my paper," he wrote.
He broke the ice finally, but it was not until he took classes in the deaf program that he felt Ohlone's social world had opened up to him.
Sign languages vary
Like their spoken counterparts, sign languages vary from one country to another, as do the cultural rules that govern the communication.
In Korea, facial expressions are discouraged — the opposite of the deaf culture in the United States, said Sung Sook Shin, a 27-year-old from Seoul enrolled in the deaf program. It was one of the adjustments she had to make on top of other differences, such as being in an ethnically and racially diverse community.
Here, facial expressions, including raising or lowering the eyebrows, and body language are integral parts of communicating, according to the Basic Guide to ASL Web site.
Joe McLaughlin, dean of Ohlone's Deaf Studies program, said interacting with hearing people can be tricky because they are not used to the gesturing used in deaf communication.
Stephanie Pintello and Kelly Wilmeth translated McLaughlin's, Isidore's and Sung's signing during an interview.
Stomping feet and waving hands to get someone's attention are common and necessary elements of the silent, highly visual world of deaf communication, but not always acceptable in a wider setting.
These experiences are common to deaf individuals, who must go through an adjustment to being deaf, McLaughlin said.
Overcoming obstacles
It took Isidore and Sung years to embrace signing and accept being deaf.
The process took 11 years for Sung, who calls herself "profoundly deaf." She lost her hearing at the age of 3 as a result of having the chicken pox.
Sung was 14 the last time she used her voice. After she yelled in distress during an emergency, a teacher at the deaf resident school she attended told Sung that she sounded like a wolf — a comparison that shamed the young girl.
"I turned off my voice and haven't used it since," she said.
Isidore was deaf for seven years when he got over his embarrassment at using sign language in front of hearing people. He said that when people showed curiosity and wanted to learn more, it gave him the confidence to accept signing and not feel like "a freak."
Being deaf, however, saved Isidore's life during the genocide in Burundi that was sparked in 1993 with the assassination of the first democratically elected president. Soldiers and rebels embroiled in a brutal display of ethnic bloodshed spared people who could declare their deafness, he said. And the deaf students at his school refused to be divided by ethnicity, unlike hearing people, he added.
"We were able to cooperate differently than the hearing people who were divided," he wrote.
It was winter when Isidore Niyongabo arrived in Fremont a year and a half ago.
It was cold and lonely for the 24-year-old, who was used to the humid climate and genial atmosphere of his native Burundi, a small African country wedged between Uganda and Tanzania.
His experience is one shared by scores of international students trying to cope with a new culture and a foreign language. But in Isidore's case, there was one more element to the story. He is deaf.
Isidore is one of 11 international students enrolled in the Ohlone College Center for Deaf Studies. He came to Ohlone in January 2005 looking for educational opportunities his country cannot offer him, opportunities he intends to translate into changes for other deaf people in his homeland.
Burundi is a poor country, scarred by a decade of bloodshed that killed Isidore's father and forced his mother, three brothers and a sister into a refugee camp with hundreds of thousands of other Burundians. At least 200,000 died.
Isidore has learned to finesse many obstacles, but learning how to make friends among busy Americans scurrying about their business was not easy.
"My first semester was full of frustration, isolation and observing the new environment, culture and trying to find how to cope with this world," he wrote in an e-mail.
Isidore was 10 when he lost his hearing during a bout with meningitis, so he reads lips and has learned to communicate without using sign language.
Still, walking up to someone to start a conversation here isn't easy.
He had mastered enough English to communicate through writing notes, but "I guessed no one had time to stop and read what I wrote on my paper," he wrote.
He broke the ice finally, but it was not until he took classes in the deaf program that he felt Ohlone's social world had opened up to him.
Sign languages vary
Like their spoken counterparts, sign languages vary from one country to another, as do the cultural rules that govern the communication.
In Korea, facial expressions are discouraged — the opposite of the deaf culture in the United States, said Sung Sook Shin, a 27-year-old from Seoul enrolled in the deaf program. It was one of the adjustments she had to make on top of other differences, such as being in an ethnically and racially diverse community.
Here, facial expressions, including raising or lowering the eyebrows, and body language are integral parts of communicating, according to the Basic Guide to ASL Web site.
Joe McLaughlin, dean of Ohlone's Deaf Studies program, said interacting with hearing people can be tricky because they are not used to the gesturing used in deaf communication.
Stephanie Pintello and Kelly Wilmeth translated McLaughlin's, Isidore's and Sung's signing during an interview.
Stomping feet and waving hands to get someone's attention are common and necessary elements of the silent, highly visual world of deaf communication, but not always acceptable in a wider setting.
These experiences are common to deaf individuals, who must go through an adjustment to being deaf, McLaughlin said.
Overcoming obstacles
It took Isidore and Sung years to embrace signing and accept being deaf.
The process took 11 years for Sung, who calls herself "profoundly deaf." She lost her hearing at the age of 3 as a result of having the chicken pox.
Sung was 14 the last time she used her voice. After she yelled in distress during an emergency, a teacher at the deaf resident school she attended told Sung that she sounded like a wolf — a comparison that shamed the young girl.
"I turned off my voice and haven't used it since," she said.
Isidore was deaf for seven years when he got over his embarrassment at using sign language in front of hearing people. He said that when people showed curiosity and wanted to learn more, it gave him the confidence to accept signing and not feel like "a freak."
Being deaf, however, saved Isidore's life during the genocide in Burundi that was sparked in 1993 with the assassination of the first democratically elected president. Soldiers and rebels embroiled in a brutal display of ethnic bloodshed spared people who could declare their deafness, he said. And the deaf students at his school refused to be divided by ethnicity, unlike hearing people, he added.
"We were able to cooperate differently than the hearing people who were divided," he wrote.