How a deaf girl in Eastern Zambia stole our hearts
….this is Africa. It smells like Africa, it feels like only sub-saharan Africa can feel, it gets in your blood, under your skin, just like they say. Either that or it freaks you out, the poverty, the utterly different culture, the snakes, the spiders, the malaria, and you never come back. I haven’t posted since…
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Cholera, Malaria, drought, hunger. Africa can be a hard place.
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We went to pick up Ketty a week ago for the long summer holiday at the end of her first year at Magwero School for the Deaf. She was so happy to see us; myself she hadn’t seen since last February just after she’d started at the school. I’m struck by how young she still…
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Hi to everyone again, from my hilltop haven in Wales. So I told you wrong in the last post. In fact Ketty started her education proper in her second term. The first was cramming sign language, which I guess continues. But she’s started on mathematics and introduction to science and other stuff. They give school…
Read MoreSeems ages since I posted. The fact is that I’m now living in a Welsh hilltop ashram and everyday life seems so far away. But we’re a busy place, established and run by a renowned Yoga Master, Swami Nishchalananda Saraswati, so there are courses and many people passing through. Many of them now know of…
Read MoreWe managed to keep away for a month! After we dropped Ketty off for her first taste of school (https://ulingana.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/a-very-special-school/) we only had one communication from the head, that Ketty was doing fine. Alice & Catherine bought loads of vegetables & stuff in Chipata, on the way, then we went to the school. Saturday, day…
Read MoreThis post is what the fundraising for my young friend Ketty is all about. This is the school which holds our future hopes. Difference between an education, and zero prospects for a young deaf girl who is not understood by anyone in the community except her close relatives.
Read MorePeople doing fundraising often do some challenge. My friend Bryony (who is involved in the charitable website ‘ulingana’ with me) has just run a half marathon. But she’s young! And my knee cartilage (skiing legacy!) will not allow me to run. I could spend money to raise money (!) by …say….jumping out of an aeroplane dressed…
Read MoreIn the same way that a blind person’s sense of hearings is often greatly enhanced, so with Ketty her sense of ‘seeing things’ is much more acute than the average person. The first time we met, we went for a walk through the garden and orchard of the NGO. I loved that everything, we had to…
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