It has been an amazing week working for the project “Deaf
Reach”. I volunteered in an organization that teach the deaf and mute
children mostly from the underprivileged background. The deaf world is a
completely different world that needs to be experienced more than learnt about.
Although I did not get an opportunity to interact with them much, yet since a
classroom was situated next to the office, whenever I stepped out through the
back door I had a dazzled look on my face watching in front of me a class going
on of over 25 students with Pin Drop Silence.
I was taken onboard to plan out activities for their
upcoming Summer Camp. My past volunteer and workshop experiences came out very
handy helping me plan different kinds of creative activities including theatre,
dance and ice-breaking exercises. However the major inhibition I felt was to
modify these exercises and create new ones to meet the needs of the deaf and
mute. Sound plays a vital role in my life and its’ difficult to imagine a life
without it be it in the form of music or normal conversations. I started off by
throwing random questions at the co-mates working in the organization: “how do
they introduce themselves or call out a persons’ name”, I asked. The response
was: whenever they meet a new person they create a sign for him/her keeping the
first alphabet constant and making a sign that is most appropriate to the
person’s personality trait. Very interesting !! So whenever you meet a deaf
person for the first time be sure you act nice cause your name’s sign will be created
keeping your personality trait in mind J
Planning exercises for them was a lot of fun and we as a
team delved into many thought provoking discussions sometimes imagining a world
where deafness was normal and hearing was not. The word ‘abnormal’ is so
commonly used by us to prohibit undesired actions and to frame a section of
society as disabled however if one ponders through, it is only a matter of
perspective and the majority (whoever it may be) has always endeavoured to
legitimatize their actions as norms. The history of deaf is no different than that
of other underprivileged sections of world society who had to experience many pains
before they could unleash the shackles of their imprisonment. Deaf persons,
like the indigenous in America, untouchables in India and women throughout the
world, had to face the consequences of being so called ‘abnormal’ until they
empowered themselves by introducing their own language, their colleges and
universities and associations at the national level in states like the US to
lobby for their rights and ensure that suitable laws were passed and
implemented. This fight continues today in many countries (including Pakistan) where
to date deafness is made fun off and words like ‘dumb’ are associated with
stupidity.
Recently most of the workshops I have attended focus a lot
on body movements enabling the participants to make use of their body as a tool
of expression. In that regard planning
theatre exercises for the deaf kids was not too difficult. Mime is quite a
challenging task for actors since there is no use of sound and the expressions
have to be really loud. However I realized that these children are socially
conditioned to use their body to communicate in daily lives hence for them
communicating their message via mime is like a natural talent they possess.
All in all, in this limited time I was fortunate to be
introduced to the ‘deaf world’ and I am sure the volunteers for the Summer Camp
would learn much more from the kids than vice versa.
