Nurturing Deaf Flourishing Sustainably 231
position on using CSL in education. By 2014, the community was working toward,
and requesting government funding for, a national CSL forum through the Coali-
tion for the Development and promotion of Cameroon Sign Language in coopera-
tion with other partners.
The long-term north-south cooperation in Uganda, which has equipped the deaf
community with the skills and resources to spearhead its own development, is rela-
tively unique on the continent and perhaps also worldwide. Such achievements call
for sustainable engagement, which is a challenge in the current economic climate.
These substantial partnerships may not be in the immediate grasp of Cameroon’s
community, which will have to shape pathways and seek partners on its own. When
presenting the Ugandan story, we were aware of these constraints.
Therefore, in responding to the participants’ question of how to envisage sign
language research and teaching, we emphasized the foundation of this process in
the partnership between deaf communities, NGOs, academia, and governments
(for an in-depth discussion of this model applied to both north-south and south-
south cooperation, see Lutalo-Kiingi & De Clerck, 2016). The “tree” metaphor also
provides a tool for Cameroon’s community to conceptualize and monitor its own
development (see the next section for more on this conceptualization process).
Some of the community’s needs may be met in the south-south cooperation be-
tween Cameroon and Uganda involved in documenting ExNorthCamSL. The pro-
posal employs an innovative approach resulting in a dictionary, an archived data
corpus, and an educational DVD on the Extreme North community that includes
a dramatic play and narratives of deaf people’s lives. The project aims to support
capacity building by training deaf language consultants and organizing awareness
workshops to encourage linguistic and cultural preservation. It is hoped that these
endeavors may resume with the abating of war and conflicts in the region, which
have not only halted the project as mentioned above, but have also confounded
progress toward the CSL forum.
From the perspective of collective action and political change, the benefits of
these instances of south-south cooperation may seem rather minimal. The metaphor
of the wealthy African mama reminds us that deaf flourishing includes more than
linguistic and anthropological aspects; it also includes a basic threshold for ensuring
dignified lives in a broader human rights and “capability approach” (Nussbaum,
2006; Sen, 2008). However, south-south initiatives encourage cross-fertilization and
documentation of growth.
Development projects may be needed to bolster Cameroon further in its aspira-
tions and trajectories, and challenges lie predominantly in whether the community
can organize itself, agree on shared objectives, mobilize its resources, and/or find
this additional support:The sovereignty of a body of people bound and kept together, not by an
identical will which somehow magically inspires them all, but by an agreed
purpose for which alone the promises are valid and binding, shows itself quite
clearly in its unquestioned superiority over those who are completely free,
unbound by any promises and unkept by any purpose. This superiority derives