Challenge of “Serious” Scholarship 105
It is the topic of the fourth section of this chapter, which is titled “‘Being Serious’:
Deaf Indigenous Education as a Site of Empowerment.” The community approaches
the research project from their local semantic framework of “de velopment.” This is
discussed further in the final section of the chapter, titled “Valuing Deaf Indigenous
Knowledge in Research through Partnership.” Support for the development of the
Cameroonian deaf community was a necessary condition for deaf Cameroonians
to participate in the present study, and to meet this challenge of enabling “serious”
scholarship, it seemed useful to pursue the development of “pragmatic solidarity”
(Farmer, 2010c, p. 450) with an interactive partnership among the deaf community,
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and academia.
An interview in the spring of 2010 with a Cameroonian deaf man in his early
twenties is illustrative of the structural limitations young deaf people experience in
Cameroon and of the emancipation process that has begun.^2 The interview itself
was remarkable: I did not ask any questions for more than an hour; the man had his
story ready. Earlier, in a meeting with the local deaf community, I had introduced
myself, my research, and the methods and topics of the interview and provided
members of the deaf community with the opportunity to participate in the study.
The man had put his name on the list of people who wanted to be interviewed, and
I had invited him by a text message. No need to re-explain the goals and ethical con-
ditions of the study! The man remembered everything and was eager to start with
his life story. I started the camcorder, and he signed for more than an hour on all
the topics I had intended to cover. He explained how he had to argue to be allowed
to stay in school after the death of his father:When I was 9 years old, my father died. My family supported us. My mom
consid ered our situation and told me, “You have to stop going to school.”
I was very angry: “No, I must learn how to write!” My mom said, “Ah, but we
don’t have money, that’s a problem.” I said, “No, I want to learn how to write!”
I asked my sister for money, but she wouldn’t pay. My mom said, “I can’t
afford to pay for school.” Then we went to the director and he said, “Well, try
to pay.” He allowed us to pay a cheaper school fee, and we could manage.The topic of education—the key to better life chances—and this young man’s efforts
on his own behalf to gain access to it are central in his life story.^3 The interview had
a clear purpose for him, and in telling his life story, he worked toward a concrete
question that is currently jeopardizing his efforts to improve himself: “The teacher
doesn’t sign well. He/she doesn’t know how to teach. I need to pass my FSLC- Portions of the case study described in the present chapter were presented at the Deaf
Community Leadership Conference at the University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom, on
June 27, 2010; at the Citizenship Platform at Ghent University, Belgium, on October 15, 2010; and in
a workshop during the World Federation of the Deaf Human Rights and Capacity Building Training
Project in Western and Central Africa, in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on February 26, 2011. - Education is also mentioned in the life stories that are being presented in Chapters 3 (on the
experiences of Flemish deaf role models), 4 (on the experiences of international deaf people at
Gallaudet), 6 (in the discussions of Flemish Deaf Parliament), and 7 (as a part of autoethnography).