Being young and deaf in a poor country is no easy ride. Claire Soames reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo on an ActionAid funded school that is helping build communication.

“I’m not coming back until the boy can speak.” That brutal goodbye delivered, the man turned his back on his wife and infant son and left.

Five years later, Yannick Masika still struggles to enunciate even the most basic words.  Trying to say ‘mama’, his voice is alternately squeaky and croaky, exertion and self-consciousness written on his face. The word is almost strangled in his throat before finally, incredibly faintly, it escapes. His mother’s proud smile conveys the importance of this seemingly humble achievement. But it has not been enough to bring the boy’s father home.

Life has dealt seven-year-old Yannick a bad hand. He was born in the eastern city of Goma in the closing stages of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) war, a conflict that claimed the lives of many relatives. In his short life, he has survived the devastating eruption of Mount Nyiragongo, cholera epidemics and militia clashes, including an assault that brought rebels to the gates of the city a year ago. On top of all that trauma, Yannick is deaf in a place where rudimentary, let alone specialised, healthcare is hard to find.

His mother Madeleine – abandoned by her husband and trying to scrape by on her meagre washerwoman’s salary – feared the worst for her son. “He used to be totally mute,” she says. “We couldn’t communicate at all. When he was sick, he couldn’t tell me where it hurt. I worried about what sort of future he could possibly have.”

Then she discovered the Ephata school for the deaf.

It is not much to look at: a collection of wooden huts, some with mud floors, many with mismatching planks that let in water during the rainy season. Pupils strain to see the blackboard in classrooms that have few windows and no electricity to light them.

Yet for a quarter of a century, this school has been transforming the lives of marginalised deaf children in a troubled corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo. And thanks to ActionAid supporters, it is about to get a makeover.

Ephata is the only school for the deaf in the whole of North Kivu, a province twice the size of former colonial power Belgium. When it opened in 1985, there were just nine pupils; today there are 169, with some coming from more than 130 miles away. It is overcrowded as a result, but this month construction will start on six purpose-built classrooms.

“It will make all the difference,” says John Gakuru, the head of the school’s primary section. “Our children aren’t stupid. They know that no other schools are made of planks. Our dilapidated buildings reinforce their sense that they are worth less than others. The new building, which will hopefully be finished by next Christmas, will give them a sense of pride.”

When they start at Ephata, many of the children cannot utter a single word; their parents mistakenly believe them to be mute. Usually, it is simply the case that no-one has taught them to talk.

It falls to reception teacher, Kahindo Willy, to set them on the path to speech, as well as giving them a crash course in sign language. The 52-year-old is herself deaf; she lost her hearing in her early twenties after a bout of what was probably meningitis.

“The children often don’t know their names when they arrive in school, so that’s the first thing we start with,” Ms Willy explains. “Then we teach them the names of the things they eat. Before they would just mime general ‘eating’ but now they can be more specific.”

Four-year-old Rosette is hopping excitedly on the spot, eager to demonstrate. Shown a crudely-drawn picture of a fish, the little girl flaps her left hand against her right like a fin. Later, we meet her older brother and sister, Claude and Florence. Although neither parent is deaf, all three siblings were born unable to hear and the school has been a lifeline for the family.

As it has for six-year-old Zakayo. His mother is one of thousands of Congolese women to have suffered at the hands of vengeful rebels and out of control government soldiers during the east’s many violent convulsions. After being brutally raped, she fell pregnant with Zakayo. Had it not been for the school, it is doubtful whether this deeply traumatised woman would have coped.

Today her son is showing off his penmanship, copying “tomate” with a neat, careful hand into his pink exercise book. Does he like coming to school? “Yes.” What is his favourite part? “Going home and playing football.” His teacher shakes his head in mock despair at the unscripted response. “Oh and the food.”

In a country where the average income is 40 US cents a day, the free lunches (today it’s beans and mashed plantain) can be a bigger draw than the classes. “When we shut for the holidays, we sometimes get children not wanting to go home, because school is their main source of food,” says Mr Gakuru. “But as long as something is bringing them here and ensuring they get an education...”

For some, the discovery of the school has come too late. Those that get to their teens without any formal education find the academic hill too steep to climb. For these children, there are vocational classes – carpentry for the boys, sewing for the girls – to help them acquire a skill from which they might earn a living.

The school, which was mainly church-funded, came to the attention of our ActionAid DRC Education Rights Co-ordinator, Muteho Kasongo, at a conference where an Ephata pupil delivered an impassioned speech in sign language.

“It touched me so much,” she recalls. “He spoke about how deaf children had the right to an education too, how they needed people to translate what was happening in the world. He spoke about seeing people fleeing during the war but having no idea why.

Now 15 and an aspiring actor, Fabien Morisho is thrilled that his five minutes on the podium have resulted in the new school building, but says there is still work to be done to reduce discrimination. “We still get called ‘deaf boy’ as if we didn’t have names of our own. Some parents tell their kids not to play with us ‘unfortunates’. Others think we’re mad.”

Although ActionAid is providing the funding for the new school, toilet block and office, the parents are responsible for the actual construction. A seven-strong committee is charged with managing the budget, allocating the tenders and ensuring the building is completed to spec and on time.

“This way, if ActionAid were to leave, the local community has been empowered to do it for themselves in the future,” says Ms Kasongo. “The parents also know the hard work that has gone into making it happen so they are more disposed to maintaining it properly.”

Perhaps the school’s greatest success story is Eric Kambale. The 24-year-old is the first Ephata pupil to have passed the university entrance exam. He is now in the mainstream system, studying human resources.  It can be a slog at times. He can’t afford a sign-language interpreter and so relies on friends to share their lecture notes.

Eventually, he wants to found his own deaf association and become a leader for his community. He is deeply grateful for the doors his education has opened and so he spends several mornings a week back at his alma mater, teaching maths and history. “If it weren’t for this place,” he says, “I would have remained an ignorant idiot.”