Before arriving at this institute in South Sudan, Beatrice taught at Sacred Heart Primary School in Magwi County. There, the classrooms were filled with the sound of reciting voices, but certain chairs always remained empty. Children with disabilities were not merely absent; they were invisible. Beatrice recalls how these children remained in their family huts, not out of a lack of desire to learn, but because the school had no way to speak to them. Without teachers trained in sign language or braille, a physical disability became a permanent exile from the world of ideas.
Now, as part of a nine-month intensive training program, Beatrice is reclaiming those empty chairs. She is learning South Sudanese Sign Language (SSSL), a vocabulary currently being standardized to include regional signs for cattle-keeping and local agriculture—concepts central to the lives of her future students. This effort, supported by Education Cannot Wait and a coalition of international partners, seeks to prepare educators to reach 135,000 learners, many of whom are returning from displacement or living in internal camps.
The challenge is not merely linguistic but material. For decades, the few braille materials available in the country were produced on heavy, mechanical Perkins Brailler machines from the 1970s. As the country moves toward a national curriculum with English as the primary language of instruction, the need for new materials and accessible spaces has become acute. Sophia Mohammed, the director of Light for the World in South Sudan, notes that with more than 70 percent of children currently out of school, the task is to build a system where no one is excluded by design.
For Beatrice, the training is a bridge. When she returns to the classroom, she will not just be a teacher of subjects, but a translator of possibilities. Her hands, moving with newfound confidence, represent a quiet refusal to let silence remain a barrier between a teacher and a child.