The Embangweni School for Deaf Children was established in 1995 with
the first classroom/administration block completed and dedicated in October,1996.
Teachers are paid by the government, but construction costs must be handled
by the local school. Embangweni received a number of gifts, largely from
American sources, to enable this first block to be built. The facility
is extremely minimal. Each classroom (four total) is about 20'x30' built
with locally made brick. Floors are concrete; roofing tiles are made at
the mission hospital. Each room has child-height blackboards about 18"
high on three walls. There is a wooden stool for each child and a chair
for the teacher. That's it. During our stay there in the summer of 1997,
funds were found for construction of desks (basically plain tables) for
the most advanced classroom. Two of the classrooms had free-standing easel
blackboards, although their condition was so poor as to be virtually unusable.
Of course
there is no electricity or running water. Water is pumped from a shallow
well near the school. Meals are cooked over wood fires in the kitchen building
at the hostel. Bathroom facilities are limited to bankazi or squat toilets.
(Picture an American campground privy with no toilet fixture but just a
rectangular hole cut in the floor.)
Basic school supplies are extremely limited. Chalk is doled out by the
piece (I was given one piece for my 3-month stay); there were no chalk
erasers there. Paper, pencils and crayons are luxury items and a ball-point
pen a treasure anywhere in Embangweni. A few books are available, but unfortunately
because of past political situations there are presently no texts or reading
primers available in the native language of Chitimbuka. The school day
was a far cry from those in the States! The children began the school day
at 7:30 am with grounds clean-up, which includes picking up trash and sweeping
the dirt road with grass brooms. At 8:00 all the children, teaching staff
and house staff gather in the staff room for assembly.
Each
teacher and house mama takes a turn leading the group in prayer, a hymn
and a short sermon. By 8:30 or 8:45 children are dismissed to classrooms
and I began seeing children individually for speech therapy.
At
10:00 the children go back to the hostel for tea; the house mamas and some
of the older girls bring tea for the teachers to the staff room. There
is always a basin of hot water provided for washing hands. The tea is made
with lots of milk and most Malawians add 3 to 5 spoonsful of sugar to it.
They thought me very strange that I preferred my tea and coffee black!
By 10:30 the children were back at the classroom, although the teaching
staff frequently didn't join them for another 15 minutes or so. Lunch break
was 12:00 - 1:00 and classes ended for the day at 2:30. On Fridays, class
ended at 12:00. Twice weekly the entire school had p.e. at 9:30. It took
some time to adjust to the fact that actual teaching time was very limited!
The 42 children presently enrolled at the school range in age from 5 to 15 years and are about equally split between boys and girls. Many of them are deaf from birth, largely due to pre-natal measles and generally poor nutrition. Those who become deaf after birth probably suffered from chronic otitis media (ear infection) or cerebral meningitis. The losses are mostly in the severe to profound range. Some of the children wear body-type hearing aids, but due to frequently being without batteries these are of questionable benefit.