A lump of clay breaks off from a wall and shattered on the table behind him, but Kwasi Boahene did not look up from his bed.
Behind him, a wardrobe and clothes pooled out onto the ground, but still he lied steady. It was only when another lump hit him so violently and threaten to topple his bed that the 40 year old realised something was seriously wrong.
Born deaf and dumb in the rural village of Adamorobe and raised by a deaf and dumb parents, Boahene still recalls how he narrowly escape death two years ago when his mud house nearly collapsed on him.
‘I panicked and grabbed the door, like I could hold it or do something else’ he remembered. ‘I knew that should the building collapsed on me, I would not be able to ask for help. If I was buried alive, I will not hear anyone call my name’ Boahene signs through an interpreter.
‘I have four siblings who all have hearing impairments, and I can still remember the day my four year old brother was run over by a truck because he was playing in the street and did not hear the horn.’
Like Kwasi Boahene, more than fifty people in Adamorobe village are unable to speak nor hear.
The village
Adamorobe is an intriguing village located in a bowl shape valley at the foot of the Akuapem hills, where historical presence of hereditary form of deafness resulted in a high number of deaf inhabitants.
The village is situated about 40 kilometres away from the capital Accra with a two-kilometre footpath uphill connecting to its district capital Aburi.
The most up to date records identify 50 of the village 1800 indigenous people as deaf, local community secretary Stephen Akrofi told me on my resent visit to the village.
That doubles the global average by World Health Organisation which estimate five out of every 1000 children worldwide are either born with hearing loss or acquire it soon after birth.
Little is known by way of direct evidence about the incident of deafness in the village.
But there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to both local and medical perspective on the high incidence of the deafness.
Medical perspective
In Akwapim South, the birth of a child is a very happy occasion meant to be celebrated. But in Adamorobe the birth of a child leads to fear and anxiety not only for the parents but for the entire village.
According to a medical survey conducted in 1961 by Sir Alexander Drummond, Out of a total sample of 400 inhabitants, 45 were found to be deaf at that time. Deafness was then estimated to occur in more than 10% of the population at the time.
In 1970, J. B. David, a British ear, nose and throat consultant together with a team of medical experts was asked by the Ministry of Health to research into the deafness in the village, the finding were that, the high incidence of deafness is genetic.
Anorther joint project by the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine and the Bernard Notch Institute for tropical Medicine in Hamburg later identified a recessive R134W mutation in the Connexin 26 gene (congenital sensorineural hearing losses) as the cause for the hereditary hearing impairment in Adamorobe.
While some of the villagers believe they could be cursed, as the adjoining villages have not reported any similar disorders, the Gyasehene of the village, Nana Kwame Ayeh says an age-old custom of marrying within the community, coupled with lack of access to medical facilities and immunisation in the past, probably led to the large number of the deaf and mute.
According to him, in 1975 the former chief of the village Nana Kwakwa Asiampong II enacted a law prohibiting marriage between two deaf persons to reduce the number of deaf population in the village.
Though deaf women seem to have no problem in finding partners for marriage, it is generally believed that marrying a deaf man will result in deaf offspring. As a result, most deaf men have no children.
‘These days it is so difficult to find matches for well-educated normal girls, how will I get my deaf and dumb daughters married,’ signs Kofi Pare who has two daughters.
Myth around the village
According to sociological research by Amedofu, Brobby & Ocansey (1999), some explanations the inhabitants offered for the unusually large deaf population in Adamorobe was that, the town is ruled over spiritually by a deaf god who makes the offspring of any couple deaf if they have done something to offend him.
They cite the manner in which the priestess, the messenger of the town god, dances when possessed by her spirit as proof of the deafness deity.
A second legend was that, there is a stream on the outskirts of the town whose water must not be fetched by anyone for domestic purposes because of its sacred nature.
The inhabitants are not even allowed to go near the stream on certain days of the week. Those who dare to break these taboos are punished with deaf children.
Another story was that long ago, there was a handsome strong deaf young man in the town with whom every woman and girl, irrespective of whether they were married or not, sought to have a child because of his charming looks.
This irresistible deaf man, is believed, to have sowed the seed of deafness in town.
These traditional stories were re-enforced by the village Secretary Mr Stephen Akrofi who said some of the children could talk by 3 years and suddenly suffer convulsion and become mute.
Social life of the deaf
Looking for the deaf population in Adamorobe, will lead you to dilapidated buildings in a traditional compound setting, which houses most of them.
They are predominantly farmers, who were accommodated in bricks or clay homes.
Although historically, Adamorobe was an agricultural village, it is becoming a small town due to its proximity to Accra and all the farmlands were sold to estate developers.
A situation that compelled the deaf farmers to walk through a considerable distance from the village to their farms on the Aburi hills.
Each morning you see the farmers with cutlass under their arms, a barrel of drinking water on their head.
Their journey goes uphill, often through low but dense forest, which has to be mastered with the cutlass and sticks.
What make adamorobe different from most others deaf villages was that, throughout the village, people speak with their hands.
Over centuries, a local sign language emerged which was used between deaf and hearing people in their everyday life, rendering the town a very unique place of inclusion of deaf people.
‘I feel equal like everyone else, signs a 62-year old village elder who goes by name kwasi, Kranchi, pressing his index fingers together to stress the word equal.
Hearing villagers teach their children Adamorobe sign language in their homes as the second or third language, planting seed of equality among the villagers.
As a result everyone knows Adamorobe sign language and the deaf and mute population can communicate with ease.
Rape cases.
Nana Kwame Ayeh further explained that rape case in the village is on the increase among the female hearing impaired.
He said disability, such as deafness, makes victims more vulnerable to abuse, and leaves them more vulnerable, adding that, their perpetrators always take advantage of their situation and abuse them.
‘Deaf women are largely unaware of where they can go for support, due to language barriers and they are often unable to report violence,” he added
According to him, because they are mute, the police finds it difficult to drag the perpetrators to court rendering them more vulnerable.