Church where the deaf worship

Dar es Salaam. You are deaf and you want to pray? You didn’t know where to worship? Worry no more. A church in Dar es Salaam conducts its services with sign language interpreters at hand, for deaf people.

Hundreds of churches, mosques and other places of worship in Tanzania are unfriendly and unsupportive to people with hearing impairment. This locks out hundreds of thousands of deaf people across the country from active worship.

A random survey carried out by The Citizen across the three municipalities of Temeke, Ilala and Kinondoni in Dar es Salaam has found out that many churches and mosques lack the basic infrastructure to enable people with hearing impairment to enjoy their constitutional right to worship.

Because of the difficulties they have had to endure in their quest to meet their spiritual needs in houses of worship, a group of deaf people in the city decided to establish their own church at Buguruni-Malapa, Dar es Salaam.

Singing and preaching at the Immanuel Church for the Deaf Tanzania (ICD-T) is tailored to worshippers with hearing impairment.

Mr Joseph Reuben Hiza, secretarygeneral of ICD-T, told The Citizen in an e-mail interview that the church was actually established in 1997 by a group of deaf Christians from the neighbouring countries of Kenya and Uganda.

“They visited here and experienced the environment of religious darkness that their brothers and sisters pass through due to the lack of sign language interpretation services in other normal churches,” he notes.

Over a hundred Christians with hearing impairment from various denominations come at the ICD-T main church in Dar es Salaam to worship every Sunday. But there are branches across the country.

Deafness is ranked the third most prevalent form of disability in Tanzania, according to the Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics’ Disability Survey Report of 2008.

By then, the total number of deaf people in the country was 607,618. Blindness came first with 1,168,624, the report showed.

Many of them have been offered some services like access to employment and schools, but in interviews with The Citizen, they say more needs to be done.

Religion is important to them, too.

“I used to attend church services on a daily basis, but there was no active or satisfactory worship because I did not understand what was going on,” said Mr Joseph Akilimali of Sinza, through his sign language interpreter.

He is one of the many deaf people who have expressed disappointment over the lack of purpose-built prayer houses in Tanzania.

After finding it difficult to attend church because he couldn’t understand a thing, Mr Akilimali decided to quit, and he now prays alone at his home.

“My colleagues and I have been repeatedly trying to convince the church administration to have sign language interpreters, but they have been telling us that it is very expensive to hire them,” said Mr Akilimali.

For Mr Abdallah Suleiman, a Muslim who resides in Ilala, it’s a bit different because, as he puts it, prayer mostly revolves around an individual. But he still misses out on a number of important segments of service.

“I have not totally stopped going to the mosque, but what I actually miss there are sermons by the leaders, particularly during the Friday prayers, or whenever a religious leader gives a speech after prayers,” he says.

“It’s really challenging. I just sit listening as a tradition, but I actually won’t be understanding anything.”

Efforts to get a comment from Mr Dickson Mveyange, executive director of the Tanzania Deaf Association (TDA), did not bear fruits.

Mr Felician Mkude, executive director of the Tanzania Federation of Disabled People’s Organisations (Shivyawata), acknowledged the problem, but said they would take action if the Tanzania Deaf Association presented the matter to them.

“They have not brought the issue to us. We are the federation, meaning that we are made up of various organisations; for us to deal with a particular issue an organisation must submit it to us,” said Mr Mkude.

Ms Stella Jailof, executive director of the Voice of Women with Disabilities in Tanzania (Swauta), says while the church in Dar es Salaam has been helpful, many deaf people in the city still have no access to such services.

She notes: “I went to Bakwata (the National Muslim Council of Tanzania) and to (Bishop Alex) Malasusa (of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania - ELCT) to talk to them about the importance of having sign language interpreters in houses of worship, but nothing has been done yet.”

The Roman Catholic, arguably with some of highest numbers of worshippers in the country, has no special services for deaf people, the Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC) secretary general, Rev Raymond Saba, told The Citizen.

“What we do is to hold special services, for example, with children, patients and the like, but I do not remember when exactly we last held one for the deaf,” the cleric said.

The Citizen failed to get a comment from Sheikh Suleiman Lolila, secretary general of Bakwata, regarding any plans to address the problem among Muslims.

But Sheikh Abdallah Massoud, the Council’s Arusha Region secretary general said they had never discussed the matter.

He said: “It is an important issue that needs to be worked on. It is very unfortunate that the Council does not have any programme so far geared to solve the gap.”