GADHOH

The history of a national sign language in The Gambia is just unfolding. Gambia’s most common spoken languages are Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Jola and Sarahuli. Gestures, although few, are characteristic of these languages. They are made whenever any of these languages are spoken, mainly to clarify or emphasis spoken words. Members of our community who cannot speak these languages, or who do so poorly, such as the Deaf, also share these gestures. However since these groups have to rely on these gestures totally for communication they and their families or close associates tend to invent additional signs and gestures in order to ensure they are understood. As a result only those sign users such as the hearing impaired or Deaf people who live in the close proximity with each other will share the same additional signs.

The majority of the Deaf throughout the world are born into or live within a family where there is no other Deaf person. Generally, Deaf people live not only in different families but in different geographical areas which in places like The Gambia may be some distance from each other with very little chance of contact. This means that the family with the Deaf member may develop their own way of signing, and that in certain areas a sign language may develop that is not used in other places. Such signed systems are relatively simple and tend to meet only basic communication needs.

When St John’s School for the Deaf was established in Kanifing it began to draw together a small number of Deaf children, encouraging their interaction with each other and the sharing of their home signs. In subsequent years the school admitted more deaf children as it grew bigger, and today has more than 150 students. The school’s teachers, while their main concern was to establish a reliable communication system to facilitate the children’s education, have made a significant contribution to the building of a Gambian Sign Language. They introduce many local and foreign signs to the children. The children were quick in absorbing these signs and building up their lexicon but naturally they also found their own way of making sign language phrases and sentences. Over the years not only did the group of Deaf people using these signs continue to grow bigger, but the school’s encouragement and the children’s growing need to express them better, forced this sign language to build up steadily.

When the Gambian National Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (GADHOH) came into existence it shared the school’s objective of developing a communication system for the Deaf school to facilitate education. However, unlike the school, GADHOH looks beyond the four corners of the school compound. Our objective is to develop a National sign language that our sign using citizens can rely on for communication purposes not only at school but also at home, at work, in prayers, and at leisure.

Among all the various sign languages in the world GADHOH selected the sign language used by St John’s School for the Deaf as a basis for our national sign language. It is the natural choice for most Deaf people in The Gambia and has by far the largest number of users and the fastest rate of growth and development.  In 1998 when GADHOH established its own office, we embarked on developing these signs further. We started building on what had been already achieved lexically. Profoundly Deaf people with at least basic general education were employed to work on this full time. They were encouraged to see sign language as an independent language and give preference to using and including our cultural signs at least on this basic level.

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