By Njukang Princeley*
“When a new school year is about starting, we’re not excited like other students, because we know what’s coming are days of trials and tears,” says Elvira Nchenze, a visually impaired student in Buea, South West Region.
An Upper Sixth student preparing to sit for the Cameroon General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advance Level examination this year, she says access to education for People With Disabilities in the country is akin to the proverbial metaphor of passing a camel through the eye of a needle.
“It’s as if the system is setup to increase the challenges as we go up the academic ladder,” she laments.
The 17-year-old says she cannot fully compete with fellow students, not because she does not want to, but because of systemic barriers. “We don’t have textbooks in braille,” she regrets. “So when a teacher gives us an assignment to read a poem or to analyze a passage from a novel, it’s so difficult for me… and when I am in class and everybody is reading from their textbook, I feel like an alien,” Elvira Nchenze tells NewsWatch.
In 2022, University World News noted that students with disabilities in Cameroon were confronted with a barrage of challenges, ranging from inaccessible infrastructure and resources, to a prevailing culture of stigma and discrimination. Elvira Nchenze confirms this. “There was a time some of my classmates stopped helping me, and when I inquired, they said their parents had warned them to stay away from me or I would contaminate them with my blindness,” she recalls.
Added to these is the fact that most teachers have little or no training on how to handle students with disabilities. Princely Kesah, founder of Foundation for the Inclusion and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (FIEPWD), says the attitude of teachers can either encourage students with special needs to push on, or give up. “That’s why we keep sensitizing them,” he says, recalling a time he almost gave up schooling, because a teacher told him blind people had no place in the classroom.
At the start of the 2024/2025 school year, FIEPWD provided schoolbags and specialized didactic material to over 25 children with disabilities. “Their education is so expensive, but we’re doing everything to ensure that they have what it takes to thrive,” Kesah says.
The ongoing armed conflict in the English speaking North West and Southwest Regions has further exacerbated the challenges which people with disabilities face in acquiring education, according to inclusive education promoters.
“Since the start of the conflict, enrolment keeps dropping. Even those who come struggle to pay the full school fees,” explains Bibum Aloysius, director of the Buea School for the Deaf.
The drawn-out conflict has also increased the burden of organizations working to promote the education of students with disabilities, according to Gallus Bah, founder of Foundation United for Handicap, Orphans and Street Children of Ekona (FUHOSEA).
“Most of their families have lost their source of survival. So beyond worrying about their school needs, families of students with disabilities now have to worry about what they will eat or wear,” Gallus Bah says.
In 2023 alone, FUHOSEA had more than 103 students under their care. “It’s really difficult, especially because we’re now struggling to reroof our sheltered home that was destroyed by separatists recently,” Gallus Bah explains.
The United Nations reports that nearly 15% of Cameroon’s population lives with at least one form of disability. However, data on the number of pupils and students with disabilities in the country is scarce. The Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) Health Services has repeatedly stated that only one in ten children with disabilities has access to education, low figures which FIEPWD attributes to attitudinal barriers.
“There are families that refuse to send their children with disabilities to school, because they see them as financial drainers. There are even schools that refuse to admit them,” Princely Kesah, FIEPWD’s founder opines.
Amidst accusations that the government is not doing enough to ease education for students with disabilities, Henry Ntah, Regional Chief of Service for the Protection of Persons with Disabilities at the South West Regional Delegation of Social Affairs, says several milestones have been covered.
“We have been working hard to secure the admission of these children and to ensure their exemption from school fees in accordance with the 2010 Law on the Protection and Promotion of Persons With Disabilities,” he discloses. “The joint circulars between the Ministry of Social Affairs and the various ministries of education are further efforts taken to facilitate their studies,” Henry Ntah adds, admitting much is yet to be done.
For Elvira Nchenze and other students with disabilities, there is need to accelerate efforts aimed at making the road to education smooth. “We want to feel like other students, not facing these obstacles that make our schooling experience bitter,” she declares.
*This article has been produced as part of the EXCEL 2.0 professional internship program organized by Sisterspeak237, which the author is a cohort.
First published in NewsWatch newspaper No 186 of Wednesday, September 25, 2024.
