The second and final speaker in the panel “Gallaudet’s Global Influence” is Victor Vodounou. His paper will discuss “The Influence of Gallaudet on Education, Language, and Culture of Deaf People in French-Speaking West African Countries.”

Vodounou: I decided to do research on Africa and Gallaudet’s influence after I heard about this conference. I couldn’t find any direct connection, but I did find an indirect influence.

Africa’s recent history is one of colonialism, with England and France the dominant powers. These cultures and languages still remain: 23 nations in Africa are French-speaking, in addition to the local languages. Most countries formerly under French influence are non-West African nations, and are not on the old Gold or Slave Coasts.

France of course gave Clerc to the U.S., but there was no Clerc for Africa. Here in the U.S., we have some approximate statistics for the national deaf population. But in African nations, we don’t have anywhere near an exact number of deaf people, but there must be many deaf in Africa; there are large deaf families there.

Now my topic subject is the influence of Gallaudet on African deaf education. We’ll start with Dr. Andrew Foster. He is considered the “father of the deaf” in Africa. Foster was born in 1925 in Alabama. He became deaf at 11 from meningitis, and was the first black Deaf man to graduate from Gallaudet. While he was at Gallaudet, he did research and realized there were no schools for the deaf in Africa. It really bothered him, so he decided he would go to Africa and help found schools.

In 1956, Foster founded the Christian Mission for the Deaf in Michigan, and then in 1957 he established the first school for the deaf in Ghana. He founded a total of 31 schools across Africa. Foster introduced Total Communication to African children for the purpose of understanding the Bible. He also built training centers for teachers and spiritual leaders. He was deeply religious and saw education as a path to God. In 1987, he died in a plane crash in Rwanda.

Foster’s legacy was introducing sign language that was similar to ASL, primary education, deaf culture, and Christianity; this is what he left to Deaf Africa.

The languages emerged as a mix of local and American signs. For example, Nigeria has Nigerian Sign Language, but it’s still close to what was received from Foster. The schools led to the development of Deaf culture in Africa. There wasn’t much technology, and until the schools, deaf people didn’t marry because they wouldn’t have met each other. Now that’s changed and we now have deaf couples and deaf families. In the past, maybe a deaf person would be in an arranged marriage with a hearing person– a deaf wife would be with a hearing husband, and the reverse.

So Andrew Foster brought his Gallaudet experience and helped transform African Deaf society.

Q & A for this panel:

question: Were African governments convinced to help establish schools? Or was Foster truly on his own?

Vodounou: Part of the problem in Africa is war, both between nations and within countries. This even extends to regional conflict: maybe one tribe has a school, another one doesn’t, and that is part of the conflict right there.

Yes, Foster did try to garner state support. Some governments helped, while others didn’t. Foster’s wife is now very old, but she’s still working and helping in some of these schools.

I’ve gone with Foster before, to meet the head of state of a nation, and there’d be media attention about this. Deaf men meeting the leader of the nation, so this attracted attention. Usually when he asked for support, the usual answer would be that there was a lack of money, but there was always curiosity about the fact that America and other nations had schools. Foster just forged ahead and the equipment always managed to materialize so it did goad some to action.

Elizabeth Andrews: I was approached recently by a Catholic organization in Ireland looking for volunteers to go to Africa to teach the deaf but these volunteers have to be qualified. Most deaf people in Ireland are not educated and they wanted ASL users. How do you feel about the use of ASL in Deaf African education, and how do you feel about missionaries being the ones to establish education?

Vodounou: Those are good questions. When Foster came to Africa, he wanted signs to be the mode of instruction. The French came along and were shocked to see signing, so then the French government sent oralist rehabilitationists, educators, specialists, etc. Remember it was like this in France until the 1970’s.

Many volunteers came for two years. They were trained in oralism, and they taught speech and lipreading. They got hearing aids for the children, but there were only a limited number of batteries. The kids would pass the batteries around, but once batteries died, the hearing aids were no good. The aid from France was not effective. Hearing aids are and were expensive. The families paid for the molds, which they often couldn’t afford, and so on. By using sign language, you don’t have to pay.

So if you want to help Deaf people in Africa, sign is the way to go. There are very few books in general on any topic and there aren’t any African sign language materials.

My Commentary: This paper was a perfect complement to Hartig’s presentation. Again, as Vodounou acknowledged, there is and was no real direct influence from Gallaudet, but just as Hartig noted, Gallaudet graduates do have a large influence that can be international at times. This paper led to a lot of questions in my mind: what provisions were made, if any, for education in any African nation prior to independence? How did local deaf people cope during the colonial era? How did the various tribes, kingdoms, and principalities treat their deaf citizens in the era prior to European colonization? Vodounou didn’t fully answer Andrews’ questions. I’d love to know how Africans feel about ASL and ASL signs being used in their sign languages, and I think that Edwards’ final question points to a larger topic that impacts deaf education globally: the disproportionate influence of religion in deaf education. Why does a need to “know God” have to be the main reason for spreading language? Have we moved beyond that, or are we still stuck in that cycle? Look at the number of interpreters who start as church interpreters, or claim they know signs based on their interpreting at church services. It’s definitely a topic for examination, in my opinion. As for African nations, is religion still a motivating factor in establishing schools and services?