Adamorobe Sign Language

Update (later in the day): Please read comment by Annelies Kusters - it provides much more correct and updated information.  You can find more info on her blog: http://adamorobe-valley.blogspot.com/


After digging through the entire SIT library at the University of Ghana, Legon for an Independent Study Project (ISP) that another student supposedly once wrote about their experiences learning Twi in Ghana (which I never did find), I came across someone's ISP about Adamorobe Sign Language. I had never heard of it before. After reading the ISP about it, I almost wanted to cry. Or throw something.

Here's what I learned from the ISP (I haven't actually done this research myself and I definitely don't have the internet time to do so, so you'll just have to deal with my second-hand frustration based on what this other student found during her research). Adamarobe is a village near Mampong in Ghana, notable for its great farms and female chief (a very rare thing in Ghana). It is also notable for its sign language. Adamorobe Sign Language developed within the community, possibly as far back as the 17th century, independent of the introduction of American Sign Language (which developed into Ghanaian Sign Language) by an African-American missionary within the last fifty years or so. The community has a genetic propensity for deafness, and reportedly up to 60% of the population may have been deaf at one time. In 1961 it was reported to be 10%. Now it is less than 2% (with the majority of those who are deaf being over 40). Why?

In the early 1970s, a team of Ghanaian and European doctors and scientists went into the village and discovered that the high incidence of deafness in the community was caused by an "abnormal gene" and gave their expert advice ("genetic counsel") to not allow deaf people to marry other deaf people.

Previously, the entire community was one: deaf and hearing seamlessly joined. All deaf members of the community were just as productive and welcomed as the hearing members. It was accepted and not considered "abnormal." There was a school for deaf children within the community, even.

Now, there are less than five children who are deaf (or there were 7 years ago when this ISP was done). The school has closed. All the deaf children have to travel to Mampong to the deaf school there, where they must then learn an entirely new language: Ghanaian Sign Language in order to get their education. Eligible young deaf men have difficulty finding wives (hearing, as is the law), because there is a commonly held belief that they will only produce deaf offspring. Deaf women don't seem to have such difficulty, as they are believed to be able to produce hearing children just fine. There is now a strong stigma attached to being deaf as the community tries to rid itself of the label "deaf village," which it has had for so long, and now perceives as negative.

And the language? Well, what hope does it have if there is no longer going to be a need for it, as the community does what it thinks is best for itself and continues to eliminate deafness from its population? It's clearly endangered. It's also not even listed as a language of Ghana (at least not on ethnologue's map of "the languages of Ghana" that I printed up as a reference one day in Kumasi... it is hard not having the internet at my fingertips).

I'm most frustrated just by the fact that someone (some people) had the nerve to go into a community and tell them in their professional opinion that they weren't beautiful. That they were abnormal. That there was something wrong with them and they needed to do something drastic to change it. What?? And now, thirty years later, the damage has been done and probably is permanent. The entire community's attitude towards its deaf population has changed.

I have to go get lunch and finish my pre-ISP research at the library before I leave tomorrow morning. Ghana is still beautiful!