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White Monday- Deafness Awareness

Posted by: Haile Bokure

Date: Friday, 28 July 2017

Dear friends,
 
On behalf of EHVI- Eritrean Hearing and Visually Impaired Organization based in the States, I am submitting this  poem which is related to our mission: DISABILITY AWARENESS. The poem is based on common denominator that we call DEAFNESS. All in all, its messages are universal describing a human condition in SILENT WORLD. 

Dear friends,


When I was teaching at Georgia School for the Deaf, the oldest deaf school in the South, my students were restless and irritable as the Friday approached. For they used to spend the weekend with their family circle who did not know how to sign. The so called "Good Friday and Black Monday" is contrary to them in their exclusive social world. I hope this poem to instill awareness on our part; for deafness by its very nature is an invisible handicap. However, this time, such isolation is highly facilitated by the introduction of VP (Video Phone), and text messages. Even so, nothing can substitute the realistic human contact or face-to-face approach; for in Darwinian expressionism homo sapiens by his or her very nature is a social animal or in Hebraic epigram the best books are people... ad infinitum.

* I composed this poems in telegraphic script (short sentences) for the benefit of the deaf who can easily sign them as they read with relative ease.

It is black Friday
How come
How fast
Bright days
Dark nights
So passed 
At the speed 
Of light.

Now to the dorm
To pack up
My dirty clothes
And socks
Along with 
My book bag
Before cold hug
Of bye and bye
What a sad!
What a sigh!

So soon...
Pretty soon..
At noon
The yellow school bus
Will come to pick me up
To my dim house
Where I feel lonely 
Day and night
Among my parents
Brothers and sisters
Who don't know 
How to sign.

So as I watch TV
All day...
Or sleep all night
I dream and dream 
For WHITE MONDAY
Not really
For BLACK MONDAY
My favorite school day.

-Haile Bokure

 

7ይ ክፋል: ማዕበል ስርሒት ፈንቅል - የካቲት 1990 - ሰነዳዊት ፊልም| sirihit fenkil 1990 - part 7 - ERi-TV Documentary

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