CEFISE

At Centre d'Education et de Formation Integree des Sourds et des Entendants (CEFISE), hearing and non-hearing students both have a worthwhile place.  Elsewhere in Burkina Faso, that place to feel worthy is not so easily found for deaf, mute, or otherwise handicapped persons.

 Madam Kafando (left), the General Director of CEFISE, talked at length about CEFISE after taking us on a tour around the compound.  She says that the first challenge with all of their students is to help each one realize that he or she is an amazing person that can learn and be appreciated.

Stories of the seclusion and discrimination that children (and adults) face in Burkina Faso are disheartening, but the testimony of CEFISE is encouraging to all who care.  The rest of this blog will be about what we learned during our visit at CEFISE.  You can also find more pictures on the center's website:  www.cefise.org

 The center's main courtyard.

Multipurpose classroom (left) used for teacher trainings and to teach sign language to parents, family members, and friends of deaf students.  Sensitizing the public to value and invest in handicapped persons remains a huge challenge, even (and especially) in their own families.  Part of the center's mission is to value the student's parents as well; parents often feel like a failure because of their handicapped child, and end up hiding or ignoring the child. 

Madam Kafando told us that, in trying to get funding from the government, officials display both ignorance and doubt about the worth of a school for any handicapped person.  She discovered that one government minister had a son who was deaf and mute.  Who knew?  He was eight years old, and had never been allowed outside the compound of his home.  They urged the official to send his son to CEFISE, but the father was too reluctant that anyone should know of his disgrace. 

Well-educated students - even those who, despite all odds, graduated from university - continue to be jobless because few businesses will hire a mentally or physically handicapped person.  Some students have ended up teaching a new generation at CEFISE, because no one else will hire them.  Sensitization of the general population is a major need. 

 We stepped into four primary school classrooms; in each one an enthusiastic chorus of young voices and hands greeted us "Bon Jour Tanti, Bon Jour Tonton".  They sang and signed songs for us.  One class sang in English (slightly discernible English).  CEFISE is implementing English classes at the primary-school level, a step ahead of most schools where English lessons begin in middle school. 

Every class is taught in both French and Sign Language.  I noticed that the sign language alphabet painted on the wall surrounding the school seemed to be ASL (American Sign Language).  Mrs. Kafando said yes, CEFISE uses ASL because the school's founder studied in Washington D.C. at Gallaudet University.  There are a few modifications to ASL to make it fit the culture.  For example, the sign for water is not made with the letter W because "water" is not a word in French or any of the local languages.  They have also come up with signs for items such as the calabash, which do not exist in ASL.  Last year, CEFISE printed a dictionary for all the schools in Burkina that teach sign language. 

25 years ago, CEFISE was the first school for deaf students in Burkina Faso.  Since then, branches of the school have been opened in cities across the country.  More deaf and handicapped students are able to go to school.

One of the most pressing needs on the long list of projects to accomplish is the need to open a college-level school for deaf students.  Right now, the few graduated students that have the courage to go on to college are faced with university lectures in a hostile environment.
However, the funding for CEFISE is already limited, especially since at least 80% of the students are from very poor families.  

And the center is not just a school.  CEFISE has a clinic (left) for testing and diagnosing hearing problems, one of only two or three such places in Burkina Faso. 

Some children are born deaf.  But in Burkina Faso, nearly everyone who gets meningitis will also suffer hearing loss for the rest of their lives.

A woman has just come for testing. (below)

They provide one-on-one tutoring sessions for students with particular troubles keeping up with the rest of the class, and for students with behavior issues.  (below)

 Students are also offered technical trainings so that they earn a living.  Older students who come to the center often take these trainings rather than academic schooling.   



There are trainings in horticulture, animal husbandry, cooking, carpentry, hairstyling, and sewing. 

In this photo (left) you can see adult students filling used water bags with dirt.  They will start seedlings in these "pots" and tend them until the plants (below) can be sold to help support CEFISE.  Eggs, clothing, and furniture are also sold to help the school. 





When a student has completed training, CEFISE tries to help them find a workplace. Again, even with their skills, this can be difficult. 







(below) One training is to learn the art of weaving on a traditional loom.





















At the end of our visit, we were sitting in Madam Kafando's office.  It was Mr. Kafando, her late husband, who founded CEFISE.  Since he passed away several years ago, she has been running the school, but important partnerships were lost.  Mr. Kafando had connections in America that financially supported the school; these connections could not be kept because of language barriers.  Madam Kafando has been searching unsuccessfully for a good place to learn English; for this reason, she was very excited to hear of our plans to open Excellent English.  (You can help us open Excellent English!  Visit excellentenglishburkina to find out what we hope to do in the very near future.) 



I suggested that when I come back to the US, I could bring some of the student's beautiful handiwork to sell here in America (where people might actually pay the price it's worth!)  Madam Kafando was very happy with that idea, and brought in a huge stack of scarves and table cloths for us to see.  Then she surprised us with a gift of these finely woven napkins and table runner (left) made on the traditional loom.

I'll finish this long blog with the testimony of one student from the school's yearly magazine.  Hermann was a frustrated student having trouble communicating at home while also learning sign language to be able to connect with other deaf students after his bout with meningitis.  He said "I could read through [Madam Kafando's] lips: she was the only person who knew how to listen to me... no one in the family listened to me attentively.  They never tried to understand me!"

The article finished by saying:
"The evidence that disability cannot hamper your success is that Hermann, having been attacked by deafness at the age 7, was able to obtain his A-level, enrolled in a higher school, and soon will obtain an engineering degree...
"But after that, he will have to engage in another fight for his professional integration in a society that hardly considers people with disability as normal persons that are endowed with talents to contribute to the development of the world.  Let's hope that his courage and fighting spirit still take precedence over social hypocrisy."