Posted by : Lizzie on 28/10/2011 at 10:56

This week, Anna-mai, our Head of International Programmes, has been visiting our Deaf School in northern Rwanda together with Jane, an audiologist from Seashell Trust, to test our children's hearing and fit hearing aids for those who need them.

Although they started out expecting to be testing only the children at our school and a few others in the local area with hearing impairments, by the end of the week they were getting children visiting even from the capital Kigali. It turned out that there is only one audiologist in the entirety of Rwanda and she is now leaving, so Jane's specialist services were very much needed!

Anna-mai and Jane have had a long and arduous week with so many more children to test than they were expecting, but it has proved completely worth it. They have met many traumatised children: the young girl whose tonsils had been painfully pulled out by a witch doctor using only his fingers; the child poisoned by a neighbour simply because they are from different tribes.

But for each story of heartbreak, there was another of hope and life renewed. No words can describe how gladdening they found seeing a mother cry tears of joy as her son was fitted with hearing aids and was able to hear properly for the first time in his life.