106 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
[First School Leaving Certificate, a national primary education exam]. But how do
I learn English?”
The young man was very concerned about his future, and he knew that this struc-
tural problem needed to be solved if he was to have better life chances. Hoping to
pass his exam this time and wanting to move on with his life, he had already started
in a secondary deaf education program. When I met him a year later, I learned that
he had failed the exam again and was still experiencing the same barriers but still
had the same hope. He had also retained the strength to be critical and ask for
structural solutions to his problem.
There is some ambiguity in his question. On the one hand, it is rhetorical in
relation to the Cameroonian context—as my informant philosophically said,
“Maybe, in 2020, Cameroon will develop. But if not... if not, then we have to work
hard and set up a business.” On the other hand, the question is also an appeal to me
as a white female deaf scholar. As a visitor with a project, I am placed within a his-
tory: a history of globaliza tion and inequality, a history of corruption of government
and local leadership, a his tory of broken promises of white people, and a history of
deaf Cameroonians who moved to Europe and the United States and did not come
back. “And now you are here.” I swallowed and nodded: “Yes, I am here.”
I was there fundamentally for research. Though genuinely necessary and probably
helpful in some way, opportunities for supporting deaf community development
were limited within the project. The young man’s analy sis was less surprising than
confrontational: “And then white people come, and they say that it is not easy to
find funding, but they have a computer, a photo camera, all those things.” In his
analysis and conclusion of his experiences, he moved between a sense of hopeless-
ness (“will you be the same?”) and a sense of hope, in a clear call for “pragmatic
solidarity” (Farmer, 2010c): making room for research that contributes to social
justice and equality. This call for pragmatic solidar ity for the Cameroonian deaf
community is a necessary condition for supporting this research.COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH: VALUING AFRICAN
AND DEAF EPISTEMOLOGIES
The sense of moving between hope and hopelessness expressed in the interviews is
a common feeling among Cameroonians, both deaf and hearing. In modern Africa,
the “optimism of postwar movements of decolonization and the building of ‘new
nations’” have disappeared “as everyday life in Africa is increasingly marked by a
gap between people’s dreams of a better life and their actual disconnection from
the structures on which the materialization of these dreams depends” (Geschiere,
Pels, & Meyer, 2008, p. 2). This section provides background details on Cameroon
and then sketches the development and methodology of the research study with the
Cameroonian deaf community.
The Republic of Cameroon has a history of German, French, and British coloniza-
tion. It is officially bilingual (French and English), with more than 200 ethnic groups
and languages. Paul Biya, the president, has been able to stay in power for almost
30 years. Known for a lack of transparency in both its governance and its commer-
cial life, Cameroon has been listed as one of the world’s most corrupt countries