Disability is not Inability

What happens two deaf and ambitious hairdressers, desperate for job and rejected by all, encounter a potential employer who risks signing them on?

It is Saturday morning. The location Top Beauty Parlous, a hair and beauty salon for the high-flyers of Nyeri. As happens in any such outlet, Saturday is the busiest day for beauticians and hairdressers. Our mission at the salon is not to have our hair done, to make up our faces, or to clean up like the client already present. We are here specially to meet two hairdressers who are a constant attraction to client and passers-by.

When we first heard that two deaf hair and beauty specialist worked at the facility, we were curious. Just how can one do this job, we wondered, considering that the profession calls for continuous interaction with clients for feedback? As we were to discover, Juliah Waithera and Joyce Wamuyu are a living testimony one the old saying disability is not inability.

To the JWs-notice that their names all start with a J (for the first name) and a W (for maiden name) the sense of hearing may well be overrated. Wamuyu, who is now 30 and is a mother of a two year old, is on the road to becoming a top hairdresser. She explains that she started toying with hair when she was five years old.

The then little girl, who did not have many friends because she could neither hear nor speak, splint her time practicing, not on human hair but on the closest available hair-like item grass. Of course, her mother was her friend and she farm; the girl knelt on the ground and carefully twisting together blades of grass.

With nothing to distract her – she remained completely unaware of the sound of singing birds and the voices of nearby humans-she concentrated wholeheartedly on transforming the grass into a beauty. Today the young woman, who has had formal training in hairdressing, and who studied only up to Class Eight at Tumutumu Special School for the Deaf, is an accomplished coiffeuse. It is her self-acquired skill (gained at the law rather than training that earned her a job.

For her ability to be patient with children- Wamuyu is hardly affected by the mother grumbling and short-attention span of children- the mother of one now focuses exclusively on children’s hair. Young client insist that Wamuyu their hair.

Although some potential customers look at her and her deaf colleague with suspicion and talk behind their backs, the hairdresser are unruffled.

Wamuyu and Waithera have been to many salons in search of jobs but, as they narrate, they were disgracefully turned away. The reason: they are deaf and some clients, apparently, will not want to deal with such people.
For Wamuyu, lady luck came knocking at the door three years ago. She explains through an interpret; ‘l know Mountain Top was a top salon, and l prayed to God that l would get this job,” After job-hunting for more than four years, getting many rejections, sometimes even having to deal with a door slamming to her face, she was at last absorbed.

The proprietor of the salon, Mrs Doris Mwangi, who also runs a hair-training college, says that she felt for the deaf woman and decided to give her a chance. If Wamuyu failed to perform, she would be shown the door. After only two months following what seemed like a wild risk, clients started flowing to ask for Wamuyu’s services.

Today, three years later, her list of client keeps growing and Mrs Mwangi is happy she signed on the deaf hairdresser.

Waithera’s inaccessible modeling dreams. For Waithera, who is good a written English, the hunt for a job would be an uphill task. After undergoing a two- years beauty and hairdressing course at Karatins’s Hair Plaza School of Hairdressing, she thought life would be a bed of roses. Although born a deaf child, she already knows where she wanted to work: the beauty industry.

It was after graduating with a diploma that she came to know the meaning of discrimination. No hair salon would hire her. Every day, she would hop from salon to salon around Nyeri and Karatina, but the response was the same: no vacancies. At our interview, aided by a sign language in petite good-looking girl says the job hunt compared to chasing a m

Although she presented her high college certificate, potential employers appeared to struggle with: how would her communication with clients?

Waithera says that, earlier, she had and dreams of becoming a model. A little exposure to social presentation and it slowly occurred to her that her fantasy was shattered. I was to know in the beauty industry. In spite of opposition from enrolled at the hair college “l used to spend most of toy time adopt the mirror, and my joy is to make other people look good also, “consult, l enrolled for a course in beauty.”

Still, she would have to use self ….for she couldn’t speak and her potential employers could not……… signs. Two years on and she was still jobless. The last born in a fan…..on the verge of losing hope when, as a last resort, she presented director of Mountain Top Beauty Salon and proprietor of Mountain Top School of Hairdressing and Beauty.

Mrs Mwangi says she did not know what to tell the girl who looked miserably in need of a job. “I did not want to turn her away, but I could not imagine having two deaf beauticians in the salon, “she says. “I told her to come after a week.”

As asked, Waithera was back at Mrs Mwangi’s doorstep, her heart obviously pounding with apprehension. To her delight, the despairing girl was asked to begin immediately.

DISABILITYKENYA.