Amber Boven: Teaching Sign Language in Uganda

My name is Amber Boven and I’m 18 years old, from the Netherlands. I love to talk with people, hear others’ opinions and decide my own point of view. In my spare time I like to craft, to bake or to write and in September I’ll go to college to learn to become a sign language teacher to young children.

All scholars in the Netherlands have to write a sort of big essay in their final year of high school. I wanted to write an essay on the Dutch sign language, but then they told me about the opportunity of setting up our own charity project in Uganda instead of writing this essay. I was enthusiastic from the beginning, but I wanted to link it to the original idea of basing my final project on sign language or deaf culture. So I asked whether it was possible to set up a project for deaf children in Uganda and as soon it was clear I could do that, I wanted to start immediately!

I had no deaf people in my surroundings. One day I suddenly decided I wanted to become a sign language teacher. It was so out of the blue that everybody thought I would change my mind when I grew up, but I didn’t. So a few years ago I followed a course to learn the basics of Dutch sign language and to see whether I was truly interested in the language or if it was just a whim. Every time I got home from the course I was enthusiastic; I knew that this was what I really wanted to do.

When I started to develop my Uganda project at home, I had no clue about Ugandan sign language, nor did I know how to teach sign language to children. However, along the way I met with teachers of Dutch sign language and I contacted teachers in Uganda to get to know the signs. And with all this help I set up a project to help the children.

Travelling to Uganda

I was very impressed with the school ‘Lwerudeso’ in Uganda, the teachers are amazing people who don’t only lead the children in their ‘normal’ education, but they also set an example outside the classes to become a good person. They don’t have the educational material we have in our countries, so they were very grateful for the material and knowledge we brought to help them.

With my little knowledge of teaching and signing I knew I couldn’t teach them full on sign language but I could teach them some words and how to play together and help the deaf and hearing children accept each other. The idea was to mix the children and play educational games. The more difficult games I would explain to the hearing children and by playing along the deaf children would understand the games as well.

This didn’t work exactly, because the deaf children weren’t used to being at school in the first place so putting them in a group with hearing children would make them even more introverted and shy and then they wouldn’t participate at all any more. Therefore I changed the plans and only taught the deaf children. I couldn’t explain the difficult games to the deaf children, so we played Memory all the time.

I had made cards of pictures of the signs and pictures of the objects, which we used to play memory and by the last day all the kids knew every sign I taught them! During the breaks of the regular school classes, the hearing children came to our games and watched over our shoulders. They copied the signs we made and tried to participate from the back row, and a lot of them knew the signs too by the end of the week.

Deaf people aren’t fully accepted in Uganda, in the villages where I’ve been people hid their child if they knew it was deaf. Of course I can’t speak for the whole country, as Uganda is the first country where sign language became an official language, so they may have good services for deaf people as well. However, before I went to Uganda, they told me there would probably be about 2 deaf children in the school.

Eventually I had a much bigger group of children, but the people I contacted just didn’t know they existed. On the first day of the sign language lessons the deaf children hid behind their parents when I greeted them. It was strange, because all other children at the school always wanted to hug me, because they had seen white people before, since a lot of volunteers go to that school. Not the deaf children, they were scared. They had never seen a white person before, because they’ve always been hidden away in their houses.

But at the end of the week, even the shyest boy participated and laughed with the other children. Every day after all lessons all children played together, the deaf, the hearing and all the other disabled children from the other projects. I might have not taught them perfect sign language, but now people know they exist and they know they’re worth it.

Looking to the future

At the moment I’m preparing for college, it starts in September and it takes 4 years to become a Dutch sign language teacher. I would love to teach young children sign language or maybe guide and support families who have deaf children. These are all dreams that take place in the Netherlands, but I might go a complete different direction and fly back to Uganda.

After 4 years of college I’ll know how to teach people sign language, so maybe I’ll learn the Ugandan sign language properly and then move there and teach them what I learned in college. I hope people understand that you don’t have to know everything or be older to make a difference. I’m 18 years old and I knew nothing before I started this project, but I believe things did change and I hope this encourages other people to do the same.

All my educational material is available to download at http://ge.tt/4xsB7YY/v/0?c

You can use it for free and if it can help others, please use it.

Amber Boven is studying sign language in the Netherlands and one of her dreams is to become a sign language teacher. She recently undertook a project to teach sign language to deaf and hearing children in Uganda.

Filed in: Careers & Education