Happy Anniversary Read for Rose!
An Inside Look at a Very Special Place in Our Hearts
By Annabel Mumba
Annabel Mumba is AEP’s Donor Relations Coordinator in Zambia. She is a Scholarship Fund recipient, high school graduate, and one of our latest Success Stories.
Read for Rose is an African Education Program (AEP) center made for children with special needs that opened its doors on March 21st, 2019. Located in the heart of Kafue, Kafue Town, it is a twin center to the larger educational resource center, the Amos Youth Center.
I visited the center to find out more information on the impact that it has brought to the people and the children after the one year that it has been in existence. I interviewed Febby Choombe, an AEP high school and university graduate, who is the visionary for the center. She teaches and manages running the place with the assistance of Annie Nyambe, an AEP high school graduate who helps in teaching the students.
The students love coming to the center and their parents bring them every morning when it is open and pick them up when it closes. Currently, 14 students come to the center to learn, take part in activities, and have lunch since most parents are unable to provide some meals to their children. Six of the students who attend are hearing impaired (totally deaf) and one is hard of hearing, two students have Cerebral Palsy, one is visually impaired (completely blind) while another student has low vision, one has Spinal Bifida and Hydrocephalus, and one student has Cerebral Palsy and Hydrocephalus.
I had an opportunity to talk to a few parents and hear their stories. This is what they had to say.
Pricilla and her daughter, Sekela.
Pricilla & Sekela
Pricilla is a mother to one of the children, Sekela, who has Spinal Bifida and Hydrocephalus. She was born on the 25th of April 2013. Her condition has left her legs paralyzed and unable to walk.
Sekela’s mother had this to say, “Life has not been easy having a special child. I had challenges accepting that my daughter will never walk and possibly lead a normal life in this competitive world where walking by yourself is critical.”
She also told me how she came to know about Read for Rose, “I had enrolled her at a certain school which offered some classes to kids like her, it’s a community school. Sekela stayed at the school for two years, but still I did not see much improvement. I was thinking of letting her stay home as I was getting tired of taking her to school every day and I have not seen improvement in her academics. One day someone was talking about a center which was now opened for children with special needs, that was in October 2019, and I decided to try and see if it would be better or keep looking.”
She told me about the differences she has noticed within this short period and she emotionally shared, “Ever since my daughter came here, she is able to read the basics and loves to get involved and likes to help at home like getting a cup in the kitchen, which she never did before. We used to overlook her abilities and see her as someone who is disabled. But here, the students are free and feel very comfortable.” Pricilla wishes for other parents with such children to embrace them and bring them to Read for Rose. She hopes for the center to eventually turn into a school from elementary to high school. “I cannot wait to see the day that the Read for Rose Special Education Center can be a school to teach more children like Sekela. I now know that my daughter will be okay and successful. Thank you, Read for Rose, for your kindness. “
Gertrude and her daughter, Catherine.
Gertrude & Catherine
Catherine is one of the students at Read for Rose who is hearing impaired, totally deaf, and is totally dependent on sign language. She is four years old, a very active and bright student. Gertrude is Catherine’s mother. She is a mother of three, a boy and two girls who are all hearing impaired and without speech. I asked her to tell me about her children and the challenges she is having. “It was three months after Maxwell, my eldest child, was born I noticed that he started getting sick all the time and he never used to make a sound when crying and could not respond to my voice,” she told me. “We went to a clinic, but were transferred to the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka. There, a doctor attended to us. I was heartbroken when the doctor told me that my son cannot hear or speak,,“ she narrated in an emotional voice.
She had another child, Janet, who also turned out to be deaf and without speech. This time around she became scared and more heartbroken because of the stigma she faced in society for having children with special needs. Seven years passed by before she had Catherine and hoped that she wouldn’t be the same too. Gertrude’s world came crumbling down when Catherine was not any different. Her life became hard because all her children were special needs and needed medical attention from time to time and the stress of finding a school for them was another story.
Many children with special needs in Zambia and Kafue have no access to basic literacy. From the data that I could gather, approximately 250 children who are special needs in Kafue are mostly hidden in homes for fear of being stigmatized for it and no facilities for such kids.
Back to Catherine’s mother, she stumbled upon Read for Rose early in 2019 and decided to try and give her children a chance to learn and, hopefully, get an education. She explained how it was very difficult to communicate with her children because she has no knowledge of sign language. Catherine has been coming to the center since last year and has developed a lot of basic literacy skills and is able to communicate and count. Her brother and sister are in another town with her mother’s family, but come to visit and spend their time at Read for Rose too.
Gertrude hopes and wishes for a better future for her three children. “I know and believe that my children will do just fine. I will never get tired of bringing them here every day and I am happy when they teach me how to sign, it shows how much they would love to have a conversation with me. Communication with them was the toughest because I do not understand when they talk to me and I used to feel terrible for not being able to communicate to my children. But now, I look for every opportunity to learn and work hard for them.”
She broke down during the narration. Febby and I had to comfort her and encourage her to keep going and not despair. It was one of the more emotional moments during my time at Read for Rose because I could feel the need and desperation in her voice to one day learn to talk to them really well and be very happy. She also had something special to say about the center, “I never was able to imagine how much hope and faith I have because of this place. I am a very happy parent and will love to see it as a school someday. The teachers are amazing and really love and care for the children.”
Special Education teacher, Febby Choombe, and several of her students.
Febby
The special education teacher, Febby, had a chat with me. She expressed her passion to work with the children. She expressed how much she would love to have more toys for them to play with and more books with pictures, especially for the hearing impaired, because it helps them to learn better. She, too, hopes for a school; it cannot hurt to dream big, right? A playground would be amazing, too, because the students enjoy the outdoor activities. She listed down some of her achievements that have been accomplished since opening the center last year.
1. Read for Rose helps in offering termly assessments for the learners with special education needs. Parents are able to see the termly progress report for their children. This has helped Read for Rose identify the needs which most learners with developmental delays experience. They are working hard to address these needs.
2. Read for Rose means a lot to most of the learners who come. It is an environment where they learn their language of communication. Students with hearing impairment can now sign and communicate to each other unlike the way things were before when the children could just nod their heads when asked anything in sign language. Those who can speak now use English to communicate to each other. Those with visual impairments are learning braille language.
3. Most students could not identify letters/numbers or copy anything on the board. But now, it really is amazing to see most of our students being able to identify/write letters of the alphabet/numbers.
4. Communicate and sensitize the parents of children with special needs.
5. Read for Rose provides handwritten notes and braille notes to students who have challenges with fine motors skills.
6. Read for Rose provides life skills training and helps students with swallowing, eating and incontinence problems.
HOPES and DREAMS
At Read for Rose, we hope to see the following:
1. Voice recorders to help students like Winnifrida (who is vision impaired) to help her keep the notes and revise them on her own without the teacher’s assistance. More braille papers, and other braille equipment, which can help braille writing easier and faster for both the student and the teacher.
2. Most of the students with physical problems have challenges using their fine motor skills. We hope to have assistive devices for students with physical impairments such as a printer to make the work of handwritten notes/assessment tests easier.
3. Most students have real challenges with dyslexia and dyscalculia, but are good in art and music. Having instruments which can enhance their interest would be life changing. We hope to have special calculators for the students too.
4. Special wheelchairs or sitting platforms, for students who get swollen legs when they sit on the desks, which would allow them to see things written on the board. Since mobility is one of most important activity for students with physical impairment, we also hope to see a carpet or mat which would allow the students who crawl to be as mobile as possible. We are also hoping and wishing to see a walker and standing frame to help them be as physically fit as possible.
5. We would like to have a refrigerator to keep our food and avoid it from going bad because we sometimes buy food in bulk.
6. We hope to have computers for students with special needs so they may have access to technology.
7. To have a skills center so our students can learn skills which can help them to have independent lives.
8. A minivan that would let provide our students the opportunity to explore other places outside of Read for Rose and Kafue.
We have full faith that all of these things will one day be possible as we wish for only the best for our students!