Inclusion of people with disabilities is not a luxury of rich countries. A blind man from Mozambique studies in Europe, returns to his home country and has been helping disabled people with education and jobs ever since. A surprising success
Today it is Cremildo’s turn to sing the song about the rooster. But the boy at the front at the blackboard hesitates, the other children in the class look at him expectantly. And then Cremildo sings softly “The cock that crows”, too soft for the big tent with the holey roof in which the 40 or so boys and girls are taught.
“Sing louder, Cremildo!” Encourages him, “Sing louder!” The rattling of motorbikes and the shouts of snack sellers on the street in front of the tent threaten to drown out Cremildo. The seven-year-old takes a deep breath, does not turn his gaze from his classmates and starts again: “The cock that crows, Kikiriki!”
“Kikiriki!” Cheer the other children and clap their hands. Cremildo also wants to clap, jerks his upper body, throws his shoulders forward, his palms just brush, they don’t hit each other. His arms are too short, his hands are fused at too acute an angle, both thumbs are missing; Cremildo’s right ear is also deformed. He was born this way – and it seemed like he was doomed to a life of isolation and inactivity. But two months ago he started school in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Around half of the roughly 30 million people in Mozambique live below the poverty line. 45 percent of adults can neither read nor write. People with disabilities are particularly affected. Many still believe that there is a curse on them. Children are hidden from their families out of shame or avoided in their communities. And again and again they are sent home by overwhelmed teachers. Later in life, people with disabilities are four times more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 15 percent of the world’s population has a physical or mental disability. 80 percent of them live in developing countries. Infectious diseases such as malaria and measles still kill many people and, like polio, are often disabling. Diseases that we hardly remember in Europe. While glasses and hearing aids are a matter of course in many Western countries, in Mozambique most people who cannot see or hear or can see or hear only with great difficulty can only live in silence and eternal night.
The situation is different in the Mozambican province of Sofala and its capital Beira: Here the inclusion of people with disabilities in schools and the labor market is strikingly successful. Thanks to Cremildo and the many others, who are rejected or even killed in some places, this chance was given to a stocky man with an amazing life story.
José Diquinssone welcomes you to his cool garden shed on the outskirts of Beira in mid-May. The 57-year-old sits on an opulent chair, the ornate back of which arches over his head like a crown. Under his gold-rimmed sunglasses: an open smile. Drawings of giraffes, water buffalo and elephants hang on the pink painted walls. In Beira they respectfully call him “Dr. Diquinssone ”because he studied. “On hot days like today, I like to retire here,” says Diquinssone. “Then I write poems or play the guitar for a few hours.”
When he walks over the stone slabs that lead through the garden of his house, he moves purposefully and confidently, he doesn’t need any help on his property, neither from his wife nor from his two daughters. But beyond the walls that surround his little realm, he needs others to see for him. But it wasn’t always like that.
José Diquinssone was born in 1964 as one of seven children in a village around 200 kilometers west of Beira. The family is poor, José helps his parents on the field, plays football with his siblings and the children of the neighborhood in his free time. Until November 1974 when he got measles. After a week he can no longer see. In developing countries in particular, where many children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, the infection can lead to blindness.
The nearest hospital is 60 kilometers away, José’s family cannot afford transportation, and his parents have to borrow money from others in the village. When they can finally take the boy to the hospital, it is too late: his eyesight cannot be saved. His mother cries for days. For her, the fact that her son is suddenly blind is as if he had died.
But the clinic, the place where his childhood ends so abruptly, becomes the place of a new beginning for the then eleven-year-old. “Nothing is lost! You have to believe in your son as God does! ”- it is the words of a Catholic nurse and nun that give the parents new hope. “I can still hear her voice today,” says José Diquinssone. She was warm and friendly – and yet so determined that Jose’s family can put their doubts aside. “Nothing is lost! You have to believe in yourself like God does! “
José Diquinssone is absolutely certain: Without the nun Filomena, his life would have been different. It is she who tells his parents about a private school for the blind in Beira, which is still the only one in Mozambique to this day. There, José Diquinssone learns to read and write Braille, and makes new friends. He enjoys his time at school, thrives over the years. And when he’s at home with the family during the holidays, he misses the boys and girls in his class. Because “at home nobody really knew how to deal with me and my handicap. How they should spend time and play with me, ”he recalls. “I felt alone.”
José Diquinssone speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully. If he is looking for the right expression, his toes, which are stuck in black flip-flops, twitch. He holds it in the air until he can think of the right phrase.
The security among his own kind ends for him after the fourth grade. At the time, higher grades are not taught at the school for the blind. José Diquinssone is transferring to a state school. None of his teachers had ever taught a visually impaired child before. The boy is afraid of being left out. But the other children in the class read to him from workbooks, the teachers tell him what is on the blackboard.
His grades are good. So good that it is enough to study. But no university in Mozambique wants to accept him. A blind person? To study? You don’t know how to do it. José Diquinssone is applying for a scholarship to study in Portugal. And again struggles with fear: How will he find his way in the foreign country? How will the teachers and the other students react to his disability?
While the civil war raged in his homeland, which would last almost 16 years and cost a million people their lives, Diquinssone began studying sociology in Lisbon in 1986. After three years he attached a master’s degree in African Studies. Although he has shown that he can learn and study despite his limitations, the management of the faculty is skeptical: How should a blind person be able to conduct research? How to understand the literature? There is also a lack of aids in this European country; none of the books in the university library are in Braille. José Diquinssone pays assistants, has them record the most important texts and notes on a recorder – and passes the exams.
While two lizards chase each other over the window pane in the blazing midday sun, the fan hums over Diquinssone in the garden shed. He flips up the glass of his watch and feels the time in Braille. He seems satisfied with himself and the world, a man who is at rest – very different from the boy and student who feared failure. His success has given him confidence. “Education was my stepping stone,” he says.
After his studies, he wants to give something back to his country and fight for an inclusive society. So that other children with disabilities can go to school or disabled people can get an education. He wants to educate people, break the stigmata and put an end to discrimination against the disabled. A bold plan that José Diquinssone returned to Beira to implement in 1995, three years after the end of the civil war.
He initially works for his old school for the blind, and in 2001 he becomes president of the Mozambique Blind Association. He organizes training courses in Braille for the teachers of the Pedagogical University in Beira, teaches as a guest lecturer at numerous universities in the country, and succeeds in getting more and more of them to open up to blind students.
And he gets into politics. For ten years he headed the Ministry for Women, Children and Social Affairs of the Sofala Province. During this time he works closely with aid organizations, such as “Light for the World” from Austria, but also with local initiatives. Their social workers are looking for people with disabilities in municipalities in the province, which is about the size of Bavaria, in order to support them and give them access to school or adult education. More than 5,300 people, including around 1,500 children under the age of 18, have received support from the programs to date. Elementary school student Cremildo is one of them.
Once, José Diquinssone recalls, a minister from the capital, Maputo, visited him. After a tour of the city, she asked him why there were so many more disabled people in Beira than elsewhere in Mozambique. José Diquinssone grinned, was silent for a few seconds – and then said: “People with disabilities feel at home with us.” They come, he told the minister, even from other cities and provinces, go to school here, do an apprenticeship. For example at the two vocational training centers of the “Young Africa” organization in Beira and in the nearby city of Dondo. There, young people with and without disabilities can learn a trade in courses lasting several months, including carpentry, tailoring, cooking or baking. And the trainees, who are in wheelchairs, access every building via ramps, teaching materials are available in Braille, and the trainers are trained in sign language several times a year. In the locksmith’s shop, a deaf graduate works as an assistant teacher and motivates other deaf people: 17 of them are taking part in the current course. Outside the center, quite a few who have completed their training here have already found jobs as craftsmen or tailors. And deaf cooks work in several restaurants in town.
For José Diquinssone, ten years as a politician were both fulfillment and disappointment. He often had to bow to the decisions of the government in Maputo and was unable to implement many of his ideas. “There was a lack of budget and the will to change,” he says. It is not enough to find people with disabilities and integrate them into the school system. They also have to be equipped with adequate aids such as a Braille printer or computer software. “But many in this country still think that investing in disabled people is money lost,” he says – and makes no secret of his anger.
Last March, José Diquinssone finally resigned from the ministry. But he has not retired for a long time, he wants to continue to campaign for education, wants to make it clear to the young people what chances they have if they make themselves noticeable and insist on their right to support.
On a Wednesday evening, just before half past seven. José Diquinssone sits in a small radio studio in the center of Beira. The paint is peeling off the walls, the hallway smells of garlic and mold. Anástacio Joao Tijó sits next to Diquinssone in the studio. He is the moderator of the “Rádio Moçambique” and Diquinssone’s former student.
“Seja bem-vindo a la Hora do cidadão” – You are welcome to the citizens’ hour, he calls into the microphone in front of him. They are on the air every week, and people all over the country listen to them. For half an hour they talk about the inclusion of people with disabilities, living together in cities and how things stand in Africa with regard to human rights. “Last week it was about the fate of a disabled girl in the neighboring province of Imhabene,” explains Diquinssone. The parents were overwhelmed with the care. Without government support, they would have seen no alternative but to kill their daughter. “That can’t happen!” Says Diquinssone. “We must not be silent”.
But not only the silence has to be broken – more people in Mozambique also have to learn sign language in order to be able to communicate with the deaf, for example. The police authorities have recognized this and are starting to organize initial training courses.
In an air-conditioned conference room in the middle of Beira, a young woman in a cream-colored skirt points with her thumbs up, then moves her right palm upwards. It is the sign for “Bom dia” – good morning. The 18 uniformed police officers who sit at the tables in the room do the same. Instead of being on patrol, they learn the basics of sign language on this day. It’s the first day of her ten day training.
The emergency services from Beira are the first to undergo such training in Mozambique; other officials in other cities and districts of the Sofala province will follow. In the end, 50 of them should be able to communicate with deaf people. Until now, the police officers always had to call for help from people who could speak sign language. But what if it had to be done quickly or if the interpreters were unable to attend? “We often didn’t understand what exactly happened,” says Sididi Paulo, head of the domestic violence department. Deaf women are particularly vulnerable because they cannot communicate without a translator and do not understand what their violent husbands are telling the officers.
Sididi Paulo initiated the training, the association “Light for the World” organized it. Even after the course, sign language trainers will visit the police station once a week to deepen what they have learned. And in this way also to promote tolerance and understanding.
But while young police officers are being taught sign language in Beira, the old prejudices are still very much alive not far from the provincial capital.
In the village of Nhamayabwe, about 35 kilometers from Beira, two dozen boys and girls stand around a woman. The woman’s body twitches, she throws her arms up uncontrollably, stumbles from one leg to the other, forwards and backwards, and throws herself to the ground. It seems as if she is dancing to music that only she can hear. Suddenly she opens her eyes, pulls her mouth into a grimace. The children and young people mimick them. “Go home,” one of the older girls shouts. Nobody in Nhamayabwe knows this woman. Nobody knows about her story or the illness that plagues her. Nobody intervenes for half an hour, not even an adult.
But then a thin man rushes to the group and shouts: “Would you treat your mother like that?” The children winced, some run away. “I asked you something!” The man snorts. “Would you?”. “No,” murmur the children. “Don’t you think she’s human like you and me?” Asks the man. And don’t wait for an answer: “Something like this can happen to each and every one of you.”
Damiao Manhacha Nacimento knows what he’s talking about. He is severely visually impaired. At the age of eleven he fell ill with a particularly aggressive form of malaria. He was delirious with fever for 15 days and was hardly responsive. He doesn’t know whether it was the illness or the strong medication that irreparably damaged his eyes. He only sees contours and nothing in the distance. “I was devastated,” recalls the 36-year-old. Before that he was top of the class, wanted to become an engineer, he wanted to help rebuild the country after the war. Without his eyesight, not only did school seem pointless to him, but his life itself. His best friend turned away from him, his own parents and siblings were convinced that witches had cursed him.
Nascimiento repeated the seventh grade twice and finally dropped out of school. Until someone told him about the school for the blind in Beira. There he met José Diquinssone, who attended the institute, gave lectures that motivated boys and girls. “He believed in us,” says Nascimento. “That gave me new hope.”
He also owes his current job to José Diquinssone: In his role as President of the Association of the Blind, Diquinssone worked to ensure that blind pupils receive such comprehensive training that they can teach in elementary schools themselves. Like Damiao Nascimento, who has been working as a teacher in Nhamayabwe for 14 years. Some of the young people he confronted in the village square were in his class. “Your behavior makes me sad,” says Nascimento. Intellectual disabilities in particular are still a taboo subject in Mozambique. “In politics, in schools, in church, at home in families.”
But Mozambique also shows how taboos break open as soon as they are publicly discussed. So even Cremildo’s grandmother could not imagine until a few months ago that the boy would ever go to school. Her fear and worry was too great that the teasing might add to the strain on him. All the greater is her relief when she picks up Cremildo from school and he happily tells her what he has experienced today. Or told about his plans, just like when he climbed onto the massive brown leather armchair in the living room and solemnly announced to his grandmother, who was standing behind the armrest: “When I grow up, I’ll be a policeman. Then I have a gun! ”She presses her lips together, you can tell that she is glad that Cremildo is making plans for the future – even if she doesn’t like them. She looks at him sternly. “I don’t think that’s a good thing!” She says. “Better become a doctor or a teacher!” Cremildo pushes his back through and grows a few centimeters in height. Almost as if he wanted to put a little more emphasis on his plan. “No!” He calls out. “I’m going to be a policeman!”
In any case, he would not be the first in Mozambique to achieve his goal because he firmly believes in it.
