It is 1100 hours. The sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Not the sort of day you would remember when you are old and graying, but you would remember her.
Rachael Baragu has a calming demeanor when she speaks. A few weeks ago, that calming effect was evident in a video her supervisor took of her as she engaged a customer in sign language at the Safaricom shop in Nakuru. In the video, she smiles easily as she sings, and it is evident from the rapid hand movements that she had done a good job.
Rachael has right hemiparesis, a mild or partial weakness on one side of the body that happens because of disruptions in the brain, spinal cord or the nerves that connect to the affected muscles.
While some tragedies in life strike you like a bolt from the blue and you later get to recover, some leave you with permanent effects. When she was still a child, her parents realized that she was a little weaker than her peers and had delayed reaching the expected milestones as she grew. Constant dashes to hospital for surgery came with the diagnosis that was a little too hard on them.
To shield their daughter from an unforgiving society and the stigma around people living with disabilities, her parents decided to treat her different from her younger siblings, and she hated it.
Rachael was always indoors and was not allowed to play outside lest she falls and breaks a bone. School was no different. “Na ukivunjika? (Might you not break?),” her prospective playmates would ask. “I disliked my childhood. I wanted to be normal and to fit in, but I couldn’t,” Rachael said.
To deal with the boredom, she read a lot and excelled in her studies.
She graduated from Kisii University with a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science. Job opportunities in her field of study however, were not forthcoming.
In 2017, she attended a church conference and while stationed at the registration desk, a deaf person approached her. Communication was a problem as she was not conversant with hand gestures and signs. As someone who was always misunderstood and sidelined because of her condition, she related and empathised with this person and it planted a seed in her.
In 2019, she joined Safaricom as a Customer Experience Executive and part of the mandatory training for the job was learning the Kenya Sign Language (KSL) alphabet for inclusion and to help cater for the deaf.
The KSL training breathed new life into her. Sign language gave her purpose and improved her outlook on life. As a person living with a disability, and especially as a child, growing up, it was almost impossible to escape the burden that comes with it, ranging from being seen and treated as a burden, to experiencing bullying.
In 2021, she attended a Safaricom program where she undertook a Data Engineering Track course. After 6 months of job rotation, she went back to retail.
As an adult, she felt the need to do better by sensitising and educating her community on how to relate better with people with disabilities. “I felt like they are people I can relate with because as much as I am not as excluded as they are because they can’t hear, I have also had my share of exclusion because of my disability and I can therefore relate with them,” she said.
This also prepared her for her current job as working in customer service will have you communicating with many people and requires lots of patience.
Rachael, who works at the Nakuru Safaricom shop, enjoys her job. It goes without saying that the deaf are her favorite people to serve.
“When a deaf person comes to the shop, they are directed to my desk and we immediately hit it off. Sign language is beautiful,” she said.
“There are many misconceptions revolving around the deaf. The biggest one is that sign language is hard to learn. It is not. You just need to have interest and practice a lot,” Rachael said.
She appreciates the government for incorporating sign language into the CBC curriculum and reiterates that the stages of acquiring a sign language for a child are the same as those of spoken language.
