Ears to Hear

By Fr Seán O’Donnell SSC (below)

If you had asked me after three or four years whether there were any deaf people in my parish I would have responded that, no there were none.

The thing is that for cultural reasons these special people were hidden away. Having a deaf person in the home was seen a shame on the family. If you visited a home where there was a deaf person they would be kept out of sight in the back room. You’d never find out that they were even there.

My inspiration for becoming involved with the deaf came through a friend and fellow-Columban, Joe Coyle. While I was in Mindanao he was in a parish in Negros. His sister happened to be deaf and he had a great interest in people who were suffering from deafness and consequently could not speak.

Joe was from my home town, Derry, and when he would go home on vacation he would go around and ask people if they had any old hearing aids, because, as well as those who are totally deaf. there are those who can hear with some help. I was visiting him one time and he had an old hearing aid. He was with a little girl who had never heard in her life and Joe put the hearing aid into her ear and all of a sudden she began to jump up and down with joy. I will never forget her reaction. For her it was like a miracle.

What I saw of Joe’s involvement inspired me to do something myself. One day I was in the parish office and a deaf child came in and I began to take an interest in her. There was a fine young woman in the parish called Neeni and I asked her whether she would be interested in learning sign language. She said she would so I sent her up to Bacolod in Negros, the island just north of here, where my friend Joe was stationed.

Neeni took to the signing quickly and learnt to use it well. Then I decided to put up a notice advertising our intention to help deaf people and inviting the families to bring their deaf to us in the parish. If I remember rightly, two or three came out and that changed everything. Neeni taught them the sign language and it was just a revelation to me to see the change in these poor people who had spent their lives hidden away. Then of course, the numbers grew.

As the classes for the deaf gradually developed, we got the families involved and helped them see beyond their cultural prejudices regarding the deaf. Some even thought that the deafness was a punishment for some great sin and treated their deaf as pariahs. Many used to abuse them both verbally and physically. Even the younger members of the family would treat a deaf aunt with disrespect. I remember a woman crying with remorse that she had been taught to regard her aunt as stupid and used to beat her. In some cases, the deaf were reduced to being virtual slaves in the household, and were never seen outside the house.

Salving Tinsay was Joe’s right hand woman. Her family name was Valderrama, a very well known family in Bacolod. She really helped us. She was just gifted in working with the deaf. She had empathy and skill. For Salving the deaf were not just special children, but they were special children of God. She began to organise a month-long summer session in a house on her family’s estate in Bukidnon, inland from our parish.

From then on the work with the deaf developed. Dick Pankratz, the present parish priest, asked the bishop to integrate our work with the deaf into the work of the archdiocese and now it’s very much part of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Care Programme. Today five parishes are working with the deaf. n

Seán O’Donnell worked in the Philippines from 1962 until 2010. He is now retired in Dalgan Park.

[Far East Magazine]