SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF OPENS A NEW FUTURE FOR YOUTH IN MOGADISHU

Ismahan Husen Abdalla, 18 years, is happy with her achievement. She is now able to read and write, but four years ago that seemed to her an impossible dream.

She is one of the students in the only school for the deaf in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.

“I am feeling happy; I have ambitions for a bright future. Four years ago I couldn’t read and write, but everything is better now for me, better than it was before,”Ismahan told me.

Ismahan has a long term vision for her life now, she says: “When I graduate from the school I want to go to Media College and work in the field of sign language on television, I want to do more for people with hearing impairments through media.”

The school Ismahan attends is run by the Somali National Association of the Deaf (SONAD), It charges eight dollars tuition fees per month and six for the school bus for those families who can afford it.

Almost half the 298 students are supported by bursaries available for poor families to encourage them to send their deaf or hearing impaired children to school.

201 of the students are girls, aged from twelve up to twenty five years.

Since she started in 2012, Ismahan has been covering two grades in a year in order to catch up with her age mates.

The school hopes to be able to offer high school classes next year for Ismahan and the rest of the first batch of primary graduates.

Ismahan’s father Husein Abdalla told me he was delighted that his daughter had the chance to study. He himself has a hearing impairment and was denied such an opportunity.

“I will help my daughter to realize her dreams of becoming a journalist and to help other Somali deaf,” Husein said.

Ismahan is the eldest of seven children in her family and enjoys the support of her siblings, who communicate with her using writing and sign language.

The SONAD School in the KPP neighborhood of Mogadishu’s Hodan district opened in 2009. It employs ten teachers, nine of whom are hearing impaired.  Abdinasir Mohamed Jimale, a deaf teacher, says they use the pre-civil war curriculum which desperately needs modification.

He told me that education program has many subjects and long lessons he said it is imperative to get a new education program that will facilitate better learning for the deaf.

Aweis Haji Nor
Journalist
Aweysaar@gmail.com