Babelynn Mukila was four years old when she became deaf. Her mother Margaret Mwalonza thought ‘Baby’ was being rude or naughty, till she was summoned by the nursery school teacher and told, “Your daughter has a hearing problem.”

And just like that, the little girl, now a beautician and beauty queen, stepped into a confounding world where the spoken word is meaningless; the world of the deaf.

Margaret’s world changed too. She not only had to learn sign language, but had to dig deep into her pockets to provide the special education that her daughter now required.

“It was very hard to accept that my daughter was deaf. At first, we just waited, hoping her hearing would return, that she would suddenly recover, but that was not to be,” she recalls.

Because schools for the deaf are rare, Margaret took her daughter to a private school charging between Sh20,000 and Sh30,000 per term, a princely sum. And when Babelynn sat for KCPE, she was enrolled at St Angelas Mumias Secondary School for the Deaf, nearly 1,000 kilometres from her Mombasa home.

Looking back, older members of the Kenya National Association of the Deaf (KNAD) like Chairman Nickson Kakiri marvel at the milestones the deaf society has covered.

Kakiri recalls a time when society was deeply pervaded with the belief that disability is a curse, and parents of deaf children tried all they could to keep them hidden and wish away their existence.

Deaf children waded into adulthood without knowing how to communicate or interact with people around them.

Kakiri says that for a long time, there was no organised sign language in the country and deaf persons had to come up with their own way of communicating.

“It was frustrating because there were no rules to guide the deaf on how to communicate. Everyone formed their own language made up of random signs and facial expressions in desperate attempts to put across what was in their minds,” he says.

Even though schools for the deaf such as Mumias and Nyang’oma were established as early as 1961, the challenge remained how to communicate with the children who were being admitted into the institutions. Alloys Obiena who went to Nyang’oma school in the early 1980s recalls how the teachers would communicate orally and give them a beating when they couldn’t respond.

“Most people, including teachers, believed that everyone could talk. To them, deafness was a form of defiance – a deliberate refusal to speak. So, they would beat us, hoping that one day we would start talking. We never did,” he says through an interpreter.

It wasn’t long before he, and several other classmates dropped out because the conditions were too harsh.

But despite use of Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) - a visual language that comprises of gestures, facial expressions and hand shapes - the deaf are still among the most illiterate group compared to people with other forms of disability, averaging 150 marks at KCPE against a pass mark of 250. Currently, there are less than 30 university graduates who have gone through the Kenyan education system which is not friendly to the deaf.

“We sit for the same examination as other students, yet our first years in school are spent learning sign language before we can start learning English. From there, we have to figure out how to write the words, while a child who can hear doesn’t have challenges grasping the language,” said Kakiri.

Rose Nyagwoka who is among the few deaf women to get a degree in Kenya says that even those who make it to university have to find their own interpreters in order to participate in class.

“I was at the University of Nairobi, and I had to make friends who could help me. It was hard when taking elective courses where I didn’t have a friend,” she says. The hurdles didn’t kill her dreams, and in 2009, she graduated with Second Class Honors (Upper Division), only two points from getting a First Class.

In Kenya, statistics indicate that 95 per cent of deaf children are born of hearing parents, so they lack access to sign language until they go to school. Unless parents take initiative to learn sign language, the child is restricted and not prepared for formal education. Another contributing factor is that even in spite of free primary education, and a significant portion of the budget allocated to education, special schools are not sufficiently funded.

Isabella Adera who became deaf at the age of nine says she spends almost Sh100,000 per year to put her daughter through school.

“Educating a child with special needs is very expensive, and most parents cannot afford it. Nobody pays attention to the special child. Right now, teachers are on strike, but nobody is asking what is going on in special schools. They are forgotten, and that is why we rarely see them shining in education,” said Adera.

There are 41 residential schools and 75 units for deaf children in Kenya, with only Reverend Charles Muhoro School for the Deaf, St Angelas Mumias School and Kuja School for the Deaf (boys) catering for secondary school education. Nairobi has no school for the deaf.