Nurturing Deaf Flourishing Sustainably 233
We advocate a genealogical approach of modernity, that is aware of the
different ways in which discourses of modernity—from colonial discourse of
enlightenment and education, to the hopeful striving for development and
education in the 1960s, through the increasing experiences of the failure of
development now—have become deeply incorporated in African life worlds.The origins of despair can be situated in the economic climate of a country, which
may include high emigration rates; the marginalization of deaf community mem-
bers; and little, if any, chance to participate in a development project. The lack
of examples of good practice brings up a need for new concepts. The WFD train-
ing unfortunately did not explore instances of development in other African and
non-Western countries, which may have been inspiring and more useful to Cam-
eroonians. When I asked Dr. Lutalo-Kiingi why he exposed the community to the
Ugandan example at the WOCAL-7 workshop by means of the tree metaphor, he
replied that Europe and the United States have forgotten this gradual process of
sign language research, interpreter training, and so on because it occurred many
years ago, while in Uganda, it has been much more recent.
The study of Engeström, Nummijoki, and Sannino (2012) on a new concept of
mobility in the shared activities of elderly people and care workers inspired me to
look at learning-based or epistemic actions in the collective formation of new prac-
tices of intervention in Cameroon. Within their framework, the development tree
could be understood as a “germ cell,” an “initial simple idea [that] is transformed
into a complex new form of practice” (p. 288):The following four characteristics are essential qualities of a germ cell that
may lead to an expansive theoretical concept: (a) the germ cell is the smallest
and simplest initial unit of a complex totality; (b) it carries in itself the foun-
dational contradiction of the complex whole; (c) the germ cell is ubiquitous,
so commonplace that it is often taken for granted; (d) the germ cell opens up
a perspective for multiple applications, extensions, and future developments.
(Engeström et al., 2012, p. 289)Similarly, the tree notion is commonplace; it is a unit in a broader vision of “devel-
opment,” and it carries a contrast between immobility and an “ideal” growth. As a
concrete model that has been successfully applied and can be tailored to the Cam-
eroon context, it is a tool that opens multiple perspectives on the future. Drawing
upon Vygotsky, the tree is an example of cultural mediation in concept formation.
It begins as a neutral artifact in a situation with conflicting motives and is invested
with a new meaning of development to address the conflict, which turns it into a me-
diating sign: “It is essentially a process of reframing or recontextualizing a problem
situation.” There is also a temporal dimension: “The conflict between motives fre-
quently occurs a long time before the actual situation develops in which it becomes
necessary to act” (Vygotsky, cited in Engeström & Sannino, 2012, p. 204).
The epistemic actions that can be distinguished in this process are (1) the
reflection on and (2) the analysis of the current situation in Cameroon, especially
during the WFD training and the performance; (3) the introduction of alternative