When Jean Paul Nshimiyimana used to spend time with Deaf children, girls and boys at school, he could adapt himself to learn their behaviours in order to support them with the necessary skills as a teacher.
Nshimiyimana doubles as a parent and the teacher as he adopted a deaf child girl a couple of years back, who can neither speak nor hear.
At home, when it comes to Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) education, the right every child deserves, the child could show some changes in her behaviours especially during the adolescence. Nshimiyimana who is a teacher could use his mature sens to explain some tips towards helping the child avoid lures of sexuality such as unwanted pregnancies but his knowledge could limit him at some boundaries.
Fortunately, Nshimiyimana benefited from the training on Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) organised by Rwanda National Association of Deaf Women in the middle of 2022, which he says was useful as it brought a significant change towards implementing his double responsibilities.
Parental responsibilities
“As a parent, there is a way I could manage to support the child but it was not effective. For example I could tell the child to avoid peer groups of boys or aany other time to spend with boys, my support could limit there without explaining her the full life cycle she will pass through to attain maturity,” Nshimiyimana says.
“After the training, I gained a full content of what is comprehensive sexual education and expecially how to help deaf adolescent girls to adapt to such a situation. I had a teaching site web I could use when sitting with the child, where I had to explain her the life cycle of a girl child from the childhood until she grows up. For each point, I could ask her whether a certain stage happened to her and how she managed to go through, then I explain her a lot of things in regard with Sexual Reproductive health,” he adds.
In his educating pieces of advice, Nshimiyimana became a good parent of a deaf girl from her childhood, the girl is now 26 years old.
“I could tell her that her peers, both boys and girls could lure her into temptations of sexual intercourse, that can result in pregancies, I also explain her that she can wait until she gets a fiancé for the official wedding so that she plans for births,”
Nshimiyimana has recently, after the training asked other girl children in his neigbourhoods if they know a sanitary pad, he was surpsised that none of them knew it. “I had had it in my wallet and I showed them and explained how and when it works, I recorded a good feedback from the parents later,” he says.
He says he will continue to strive for her her daughter’s welbeing after taking her from the street a couple of years ago, whereby he took her to the bakery firm to learn how it works, and he plans to build a small bakery at home to keep her busy and employed.
Teacher’s responsibilities and how the training helped
Jean Paul Nshimiyimana, currently is a teacher from Centre des Jeunnes Soul-Muets (CJSM) deaf school in Huye district.
He says that deaf girls used to face sexual violence, including child defilement and rape. As a teacher who also has education background in sciences, he had the basic skills in CSE before the training, which he could use to help deaf girls when it comes to sexual reproductive health.
“Now I can use teaching materials and base the course on typical examples of their colleagues who faced problems due to lack of knowledge in the past. Through a debate, we talk about concrete things. During the training we got, we learned various concepts including SRHR for boys and girls and the characteristics of sexuality from childhood to adulthood, we learned the girls and women’s menstrual cycle and contraceptive methods, etc,” he says.
Sustainability of the gains
Nshimiyimana says that he managed to help children to understand a lot of things in sexual reproductive health and to protect eachother.
“What I appreciated most during the training is that we got the right channel to help our children, particularly deaf adolescent girls to cope with the situation of sexual reproductive health and know more about prevention of some temptations,” he says.