Nurturing Deaf Flourishing Sustainably 221
language recognition, deaf role models, interpreting, bilingual education, and deaf
culture. Transnational exposure and development cooperation were also new for
them in contrast to their peers in Eastern and Central Africa, who had hosted WFD
conferences in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s (e.g., Dalle-Nazébi, 2009; Lutalo-Kiingi
& De Clerck, 2015a, 2015c, 2015d).
The WFD training focused on four advocacy priorities for CANAD: sign language,
education, interpreting, and access. A functioning, transparent organizational struc-
ture, with a vision and mission, is necessary for deaf associations to be able to reach
these goals. Unity and cooperation are placed at the forefront of actions intended
to break through barriers and reach a desired destination.
The community put the training into practice by cooperating for the closing cer-
emony, which included the speeches, drama, and dance, in addition to unveiling a
T-shirt with CANAD’s first-ever logo, which was designed by a deaf artist. Specially
made clothing was also given to the WFD trainers to honor them. At that point, the
community had not yet collectively advocated for its rights. However, the closing
ceremony filled the group with pride and hopefully will inspire future success.
The emotion of the CANAD members lay in the creation of space between the
lived world and the possible world, the shared trajectory that had been sketched,
and the hope for deaf Cameroonians to “develop,” as they expressed it in their
own terms, reflected by their fruit tree metaphor for a flourishing community. It
is in this space in between that emancipation resides. Fernando petrella (2004),
a human ecology researcher and international campaigner for the right to drink-
able water, argues that “the strength of mankind is in its capability to dream, to
‘imagine the impossible,’ to have visions for the future, to ‘think the unthinkable’”
(p. 25) and that “only people who believe in the future plant trees” (p. 29, trans-
lations mine).
The metaphors of the wealthy mama and the rich provision of food are indic-
ative of indigenous notions of flourishing, and they complement the metaphors
of awakening and a growing tree. Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p. 6) argue that
“human thought processes [original emphasis] are largely metaphorical... [and]
the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined,” which
is what makes it possible to use metaphors in language. While working with the
aforementioned Extreme North leader, yaya Amadoua, I gained further insight
into these metaphors and the multiple meanings of the performance. In its epis-
temological hybridity, drama and dance creatively interweave established cultural
practices and newly transmitted Western “expert” knowledge. Underhill (2011,
p. 15) views metaphors as pathways to people’s worldviews: “if we wish to enter into
visions of the world and into conceptions of language, then we must enter deeply
into the patterning of concepts [and] trace the way they are harnessed, under-
stood and expressed by living, speaking individuals.” As such, studying metaphors
highlights “the ongoing birth of worlds, worlds in which to live, worlds to create
and to transform” (p. 16).
During the training, Mr. Amadoua, as president of the Association des Sourds
de Maroua (ASM, the Maroua Deaf Association), invited me and my Ugandan