Miss-Delectable
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Meeting Ghanaians with disabilities; An obroni
As the rain battered against the windows of the café, Lydia’s hands danced through the humid air.
Her hands arched and turned gracefully – pausing just long enough for me to catch up – and then they flowed again.
She used Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL), which shares enough signs with American Sign Language (ASL) for me to keep up with the conversation. Lydia’s hands managed to say so much without needing a single word.
My name is Anais, though nearly everyone calls me Annie. I am a brown-haired, brown-eyed obruni from the northwest area of the United States.
I recently completed a six-week stay in Ghana, where I spent my time interning at a magazine based in the Osu neighborhood of Accra. I am also deaf.
When I first realized I would be visiting Ghana, I was thrilled. It wasn’t just a chance for me to visit a country I had never been to before; as a disability rights activist, I felt it would be a valuable opportunity to meet Ghanaians with disabilities and ask what life was like for them here.
What challenges are there for people with disabilities in Ghana? What works in Ghana for people with disabilities, and what doesn’t work?
Which is how I came to spend a Sunday afternoon in a small café in East Legon, sitting across from Lydia, a deaf woman I met through some mutual acquaintances, and her husband Samuel.
At the time we met, Lydia was heavily pregnant with the couple’s firstborn, due to be born sometime in September.
I asked Lydia whether she was expecting a son or daughter, and she signed, “The doctor says it’s a boy.”
Jokingly, I signed back that my parents were expecting a boy for their firstborn, and then (surprise!) they had me. She laughed and answered, “Yeah, I know. I’m just happy if I get a baby of my own to hold and love.”
Lydia and Samuel are both educators: Samuel teaches students ages 8 to 14 years old in the mountains, near the Peduase Lodge, whereas Lydia teaches students ages 14 to 21 years old at a deaf secondary school up in the same mountains.
They met while at the University of Ghana, and though Samuel was reluctant to learn sign at first, over time he learned a little bit in order to communicate better with Lydia (in turn, Lydia will “lipread” Samuel – that is, pick up on his mouth movements and facial expressions in order to understand what he’s saying).
Between sign and lipreading, Samuel and Lydia can talk about anything they want.
I inquired, “Lydia, what about interpreters? Or audiologists [ear doctors]? Are they around?”
For interpreters, Lydia shook her head in a firm no. “There are some interpreters, but many are not trained professionally. They need better education.”
She told me that interpreters are not typically provided in hospitals – “Never,” she said – which means that she will rely on Samuel to tell her what’s happening when she gives birth.
Alternatively, she and Samuel attend a church with both deaf and hearing constituents, and an interpreter is provided there.
Audiologists are available in Ghana, but the primary issue is that most people can’t afford their services, especially in the case of hearing aids and cochlear implants.
Lydia herself mentioned that although she has a severe hearing loss (which, despite the audiological term “severe,” actually makes her a possible candidate for hearing aids), she and Samuel can’t afford the high price tag of hearing aids.
With so few interpreters available, getting jobs and education for deaf people hasn’t been an easy struggle.
“There are many closed minds in regards to what deaf people are capable of,” Lydia signs. Deaf people have a hard time finding jobs because the boss believes they aren’t competent enough to work; deaf children struggle to understand classes in mainstream schools.
Schools for the deaf are present in Accra, but some parents don’t know about them. Other parents do know about them, but can’t afford them.
In those cases, deaf children are usually left at home – where it’s undoubtedly likely that they will not learn the skills they need to be self-supporting adults.
It’s not the most optimistic of scenarios, and both Lydia and I sighed quietly in mutual frustration.
Two weeks later, I decided to visit Echoing Hills Village in the Madina neighborhood of Accra. It is an idyllic plot of land that houses a residential area and a school building, as well as a barnyard and crops.
There is an orphanage on the property, but technically speaking it is not part of Echoing Hills. I spent the morning sitting in on a class for people with intellectual disabilities – many of the permanent residents at Echoing Hills have either Down’s syndrome or autism.
Classes reinforce basic teachings such as numbers, days of the week and colors. I was prepared to feel a bit grim about the surroundings, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how happy and content many of the residents were.
The atmosphere was jovial, and it was rewarding to see students grasp the basic concepts.
Not all residents are people with intellectual disabilities. There was a 17-year-old girl who had cerebral palsy and with a fine, strong mind; there was also a 7-year-old amputee who goes to a mainstreamed school in the afternoon.
Additionally, Echoing Hills offers programs for non-residents: For example, deaf children can attend sign language classes in the morning, and deaf young adults can enroll in a program that will teach them manual skills such as broom-making and the running of a farm.
On my way in, I ran into a group of young men who were deaf and started talking with them. At one point in our conversation, I inquired about deaf people in Ghana. “Where are all the deaf people?” I asked.
In Ghanaian Sign Language, there is a sign for “to hide.” Like most signs, it isn’t easy to describe in print, but easy to understand when it’s seen.
The young men signed that deaf children and deaf people are “hidden,” but they changed the “to hide” sign into an abrupt movement, almost like a shove. They didn’t mean merely “to hide.” They meant, “to oppress.”
Nana Yaa Agyeman was my last scheduled interview before I left Ghana. My glimpses of the disability community in Ghana had been mostly from the deaf perspective, with a little bit from the intellectual disabilities and medical conditions such as HIV.
Mrs. Agyeman would, I hoped, be able to tell more about life for people with physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis.
For much of her early life, Mrs. Agyeman was the picture of perfect health. It wasn’t until she was 37 years old that she began to show signs of multiple sclerosis – and it wasn’t until seven years after the onset of symptoms that she was finally properly diagnosed.
It was an exhausting and expensive process, and Mrs. Agyeman responded by founding a non-profit called Sharecare4u with the initial goal of educating doctors about multiple sclerosis as a diagnosis possibility.
The NGO has grown beyond its premise, and now works with several people to educate and support others with physical disabilities.
Transportation is the chief issue. For people with physical disabilities needing to get to places to advocate for changes – or even just to enjoy a night out – there are no truly reasonable transportation options.
Trotros are out of the question: “If you have a walker or a wheelchair, and you’re waiting on the street for a trotro, they will not stop for you,” says Mrs. Agyeman, “It is too much trouble to get you in and out.”
Buses are not accessible, and so Mrs. Agyeman says most people opt for a taxi. “But taxis are expensive. If you cannot afford a taxi, you will not be able to get anywhere.”
Bypassing the transportation issues, the architectural challenges alone are staggering. For people who are dependent on wheelchairs, crutches and walkers, Accra is one nightmare after another.
There are rarely sidewalks anywhere in the city where people with physical disabilities can safely navigate.
Gutters are open and deep, a perilous trap for anyone to fall and trip without the means to get out again. Buildings are often built haphazardly and usually not to code; ramps are unheard of in most circumstances.
Even though government buildings and the University of Ghana may have ramps, they are so steep that they’re impossible to use without help.
Access to education - or the lack thereof - is another common problem. Mainstream schools are very reluctant to take a student with a mobility disability.
"Teachers do not want to give that little bit of extra attention, and schools say that parents and children will not treat the child well," says Mrs. Agyeman. So schools simply opt to not register the child.
With disability in general, "there is a lot of superstition" still. Mrs. Agyeman waves her hand, sighing. "Things like witchcraft, a curse on the family..."
The belief that disability is a punishment by the gods or the result of a witch's spell means there are many cases of abandonment or sub-par care.
The most prominent one in my mind is the story of a little girl who could only get around by crawling on her knees and arms, so her family kept her in the backyard and put her food in a box for her to eat.
I've also personally seen many beggars on the streets; some seem miserable, others at least ambivalent of their circumstances.
Ghana isn’t unaware of the situation for Ghanaians with disabilities. Or at least, the government isn’t completely unaware.
According to the United Nations Enable group, Ghana was one of the first to sign the convention and optional protocol for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in March of 2007.
A year earlier, in fact, the government passed the Persons With Disability Act of Ghana – which is supposed to be a safeguard against every single scenario described in this article.
Legally speaking, all the rights are there for people with disabilities: the access to public spaces, the free general and specialist medical care, the mandatory education, the right to equal opportunity for employment and transportation.
“The laws are there,” said Mrs. Agyeman, “but there is nobody enforcing them.”
It’s problematic, considering that people with disabilities make up a significant portion of the population in Ghana.
No one is sure of the exact number, but the World Health Organization estimates the rate to be around 7 to 10% (around 1.5 to 2.2 million people in the country).
Translation: The laws should be changing lives for thousands of Ghanaians, and yet it hasn’t. Ghanaians with disabilities want to change things for the better, but how to do so in the face of obstacles that the law is supposed to fix, such as inaccessible transportation or lack of education?
Learning about disabilities in Ghana was always a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it frustrates me to see these issues that, frankly, shouldn’t be issues in the first place.
On the other, I take hope and comfort from the successful people with disabilities I have met: the happily married deaf teacher expecting a beautiful baby son; the young deaf men eager to create better lives for themselves; the woman with multiple sclerosis who is the founder of an NGO and is trying to bring together people with physical disabilities; and all the people along the way who have supported them, from parents to spouses to friends.
No matter where one is in the world, there remains this: The most disabling part of being a person with a disability isn’t always the actual disability. Sometimes, it’s the way that the world sees you, the way your country values you, and the way that your family and friends think about you – that can be the most disabling thing of all.
Alternatively, if the world and your country and your family support you as a person with a disability, it can be the most empowering thing of all.
As the rain battered against the windows of the café, Lydia’s hands danced through the humid air.
Her hands arched and turned gracefully – pausing just long enough for me to catch up – and then they flowed again.
She used Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL), which shares enough signs with American Sign Language (ASL) for me to keep up with the conversation. Lydia’s hands managed to say so much without needing a single word.
My name is Anais, though nearly everyone calls me Annie. I am a brown-haired, brown-eyed obruni from the northwest area of the United States.
I recently completed a six-week stay in Ghana, where I spent my time interning at a magazine based in the Osu neighborhood of Accra. I am also deaf.
When I first realized I would be visiting Ghana, I was thrilled. It wasn’t just a chance for me to visit a country I had never been to before; as a disability rights activist, I felt it would be a valuable opportunity to meet Ghanaians with disabilities and ask what life was like for them here.
What challenges are there for people with disabilities in Ghana? What works in Ghana for people with disabilities, and what doesn’t work?
Which is how I came to spend a Sunday afternoon in a small café in East Legon, sitting across from Lydia, a deaf woman I met through some mutual acquaintances, and her husband Samuel.
At the time we met, Lydia was heavily pregnant with the couple’s firstborn, due to be born sometime in September.
I asked Lydia whether she was expecting a son or daughter, and she signed, “The doctor says it’s a boy.”
Jokingly, I signed back that my parents were expecting a boy for their firstborn, and then (surprise!) they had me. She laughed and answered, “Yeah, I know. I’m just happy if I get a baby of my own to hold and love.”
Lydia and Samuel are both educators: Samuel teaches students ages 8 to 14 years old in the mountains, near the Peduase Lodge, whereas Lydia teaches students ages 14 to 21 years old at a deaf secondary school up in the same mountains.
They met while at the University of Ghana, and though Samuel was reluctant to learn sign at first, over time he learned a little bit in order to communicate better with Lydia (in turn, Lydia will “lipread” Samuel – that is, pick up on his mouth movements and facial expressions in order to understand what he’s saying).
Between sign and lipreading, Samuel and Lydia can talk about anything they want.
I inquired, “Lydia, what about interpreters? Or audiologists [ear doctors]? Are they around?”
For interpreters, Lydia shook her head in a firm no. “There are some interpreters, but many are not trained professionally. They need better education.”
She told me that interpreters are not typically provided in hospitals – “Never,” she said – which means that she will rely on Samuel to tell her what’s happening when she gives birth.
Alternatively, she and Samuel attend a church with both deaf and hearing constituents, and an interpreter is provided there.
Audiologists are available in Ghana, but the primary issue is that most people can’t afford their services, especially in the case of hearing aids and cochlear implants.
Lydia herself mentioned that although she has a severe hearing loss (which, despite the audiological term “severe,” actually makes her a possible candidate for hearing aids), she and Samuel can’t afford the high price tag of hearing aids.
With so few interpreters available, getting jobs and education for deaf people hasn’t been an easy struggle.
“There are many closed minds in regards to what deaf people are capable of,” Lydia signs. Deaf people have a hard time finding jobs because the boss believes they aren’t competent enough to work; deaf children struggle to understand classes in mainstream schools.
Schools for the deaf are present in Accra, but some parents don’t know about them. Other parents do know about them, but can’t afford them.
In those cases, deaf children are usually left at home – where it’s undoubtedly likely that they will not learn the skills they need to be self-supporting adults.
It’s not the most optimistic of scenarios, and both Lydia and I sighed quietly in mutual frustration.
Two weeks later, I decided to visit Echoing Hills Village in the Madina neighborhood of Accra. It is an idyllic plot of land that houses a residential area and a school building, as well as a barnyard and crops.
There is an orphanage on the property, but technically speaking it is not part of Echoing Hills. I spent the morning sitting in on a class for people with intellectual disabilities – many of the permanent residents at Echoing Hills have either Down’s syndrome or autism.
Classes reinforce basic teachings such as numbers, days of the week and colors. I was prepared to feel a bit grim about the surroundings, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how happy and content many of the residents were.
The atmosphere was jovial, and it was rewarding to see students grasp the basic concepts.
Not all residents are people with intellectual disabilities. There was a 17-year-old girl who had cerebral palsy and with a fine, strong mind; there was also a 7-year-old amputee who goes to a mainstreamed school in the afternoon.
Additionally, Echoing Hills offers programs for non-residents: For example, deaf children can attend sign language classes in the morning, and deaf young adults can enroll in a program that will teach them manual skills such as broom-making and the running of a farm.
On my way in, I ran into a group of young men who were deaf and started talking with them. At one point in our conversation, I inquired about deaf people in Ghana. “Where are all the deaf people?” I asked.
In Ghanaian Sign Language, there is a sign for “to hide.” Like most signs, it isn’t easy to describe in print, but easy to understand when it’s seen.
The young men signed that deaf children and deaf people are “hidden,” but they changed the “to hide” sign into an abrupt movement, almost like a shove. They didn’t mean merely “to hide.” They meant, “to oppress.”
Nana Yaa Agyeman was my last scheduled interview before I left Ghana. My glimpses of the disability community in Ghana had been mostly from the deaf perspective, with a little bit from the intellectual disabilities and medical conditions such as HIV.
Mrs. Agyeman would, I hoped, be able to tell more about life for people with physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis.
For much of her early life, Mrs. Agyeman was the picture of perfect health. It wasn’t until she was 37 years old that she began to show signs of multiple sclerosis – and it wasn’t until seven years after the onset of symptoms that she was finally properly diagnosed.
It was an exhausting and expensive process, and Mrs. Agyeman responded by founding a non-profit called Sharecare4u with the initial goal of educating doctors about multiple sclerosis as a diagnosis possibility.
The NGO has grown beyond its premise, and now works with several people to educate and support others with physical disabilities.
Transportation is the chief issue. For people with physical disabilities needing to get to places to advocate for changes – or even just to enjoy a night out – there are no truly reasonable transportation options.
Trotros are out of the question: “If you have a walker or a wheelchair, and you’re waiting on the street for a trotro, they will not stop for you,” says Mrs. Agyeman, “It is too much trouble to get you in and out.”
Buses are not accessible, and so Mrs. Agyeman says most people opt for a taxi. “But taxis are expensive. If you cannot afford a taxi, you will not be able to get anywhere.”
Bypassing the transportation issues, the architectural challenges alone are staggering. For people who are dependent on wheelchairs, crutches and walkers, Accra is one nightmare after another.
There are rarely sidewalks anywhere in the city where people with physical disabilities can safely navigate.
Gutters are open and deep, a perilous trap for anyone to fall and trip without the means to get out again. Buildings are often built haphazardly and usually not to code; ramps are unheard of in most circumstances.
Even though government buildings and the University of Ghana may have ramps, they are so steep that they’re impossible to use without help.
Access to education - or the lack thereof - is another common problem. Mainstream schools are very reluctant to take a student with a mobility disability.
"Teachers do not want to give that little bit of extra attention, and schools say that parents and children will not treat the child well," says Mrs. Agyeman. So schools simply opt to not register the child.
With disability in general, "there is a lot of superstition" still. Mrs. Agyeman waves her hand, sighing. "Things like witchcraft, a curse on the family..."
The belief that disability is a punishment by the gods or the result of a witch's spell means there are many cases of abandonment or sub-par care.
The most prominent one in my mind is the story of a little girl who could only get around by crawling on her knees and arms, so her family kept her in the backyard and put her food in a box for her to eat.
I've also personally seen many beggars on the streets; some seem miserable, others at least ambivalent of their circumstances.
Ghana isn’t unaware of the situation for Ghanaians with disabilities. Or at least, the government isn’t completely unaware.
According to the United Nations Enable group, Ghana was one of the first to sign the convention and optional protocol for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in March of 2007.
A year earlier, in fact, the government passed the Persons With Disability Act of Ghana – which is supposed to be a safeguard against every single scenario described in this article.
Legally speaking, all the rights are there for people with disabilities: the access to public spaces, the free general and specialist medical care, the mandatory education, the right to equal opportunity for employment and transportation.
“The laws are there,” said Mrs. Agyeman, “but there is nobody enforcing them.”
It’s problematic, considering that people with disabilities make up a significant portion of the population in Ghana.
No one is sure of the exact number, but the World Health Organization estimates the rate to be around 7 to 10% (around 1.5 to 2.2 million people in the country).
Translation: The laws should be changing lives for thousands of Ghanaians, and yet it hasn’t. Ghanaians with disabilities want to change things for the better, but how to do so in the face of obstacles that the law is supposed to fix, such as inaccessible transportation or lack of education?
Learning about disabilities in Ghana was always a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it frustrates me to see these issues that, frankly, shouldn’t be issues in the first place.
On the other, I take hope and comfort from the successful people with disabilities I have met: the happily married deaf teacher expecting a beautiful baby son; the young deaf men eager to create better lives for themselves; the woman with multiple sclerosis who is the founder of an NGO and is trying to bring together people with physical disabilities; and all the people along the way who have supported them, from parents to spouses to friends.
No matter where one is in the world, there remains this: The most disabling part of being a person with a disability isn’t always the actual disability. Sometimes, it’s the way that the world sees you, the way your country values you, and the way that your family and friends think about you – that can be the most disabling thing of all.
Alternatively, if the world and your country and your family support you as a person with a disability, it can be the most empowering thing of all.