His condition inspired him to teach others

Sithembiso Sibisi

Kelebohile Radebe Mavuso is not just an ordinary 26 year old but he is extra-ordinary. He was born deaf and he has a difficulty pronouncing some words but he did not allow his condition to dertemine his future.

“Growing up in a rural area, in Lesotho, I was faced with quagmire of barriers and discriminattion due to my heearing loss. Sometimes I was ridiculed about my speech impairment and difficulty to pronounce some words.” says Kelebohile who is now a qualified educator who also teaches sign language on weekends.

He says his breakthrough came in 2018 when he was admitted to study teaching at Lesotho College of Education which is the only teaching college in Lesetho. That is where he was introduced to sign language and he immediately fell in love with it and developed a passion to help other deaf people like him.

“ Sign language is a beautiful and complete language which has its own gramma rules and combines hand gestures with facial expressions and body language to convey meaning. It gives deaf people opportunity to participate in conservations on an equal footing with others.”- says Kelebohile boldly.

He says one of the biggest problems they are facing as a deaf society,is that of parents who are in denial that their children are deaf.

Children from such families are then delayed in acquiring and developing their language because they don’t have an early access to sign language.

As a volunteer at the National Association of the Deaf Lesotho,his work entails advocating for the inclusion of children with disabilities in schools,from early childhood development to tertiary level.

His dream is to see more people learning sign language because he believes that ,this will help them to be able to interact fully with deaf people. He says people need to do away with negative social attitudes ,stereotypes and prejudice because these things avery harmful to deaf people.