The school is a microcosm of the village: not all students can sign, though many can, just as many hearing residents in town know Kata Kolok.Īsih’s parents have learned to sign, too, taking lessons over the years with teachers from the elementary school, sometimes through video chat calls.īut, that doesn’t mean she has escaped the burdens of discrimination and stigma that inevitably come with being disabled. While it’s impossible without genetic testing to say if her deafness is due to DFNB3, there’s no arguing that her life has improved drastically since she began studying at the school in Bengkala. Photo: Coconuts BaliĪsih is one of the village’s non-hearing population who were not born in Bengkala but instead moved there to take advantage of its growing number of services and deaf-friendly culture. Asih (right) with her mother (center) and a classmate. “My favorite thing to do is helping my mother in her warung,” Asih signed innocently, as Ketut Kanta interpreted for us and her bemused mother looked on. She also knows how to lay the charm on thick when mom’s watching. The same recessive gene has also been studied in the Okara district of Pakistan.Īsih is confident for her age, has both deaf and hearing friends who can sign, and enjoys the same things most 11-year-olds do: playing games and watching TV. That disproportionate deaf-to-hearing ratio has been attributed to a recessive gene, DFNB3, which has been the subject of studies by DNA researchers from Indonesia’s University of Gajah Madah and the University of Michigan in the US.īasically, as carriers of the gene concentrated in this one geographic area, congenital deafness was passed down through successive generations. That’s nearly double the global average estimated by the World Health Organization, which estimates five out of every 1,000 children worldwide are either born with hearing loss, or acquire it soon after birth. The most up-to-date records identify 33 of the village’s 3,003 residents as deaf, local community leader Ketut Kanta told Coconuts Bali on a recent visit to the village. Simply put, there are literally no other villages like Bengkala in Bali. But Bengkala’s Kata Kolok, which developed organically from intuitive signing, is completely different, unintelligible to speakers of BISINDO and SIBI. There are hundreds of types of sign languages used around the world, and a number of countries employ more than one. “Kata Kolok,” the unique sign-language dialect that changed Asih’s life, was developed there over the course of seven generations and translates literally to “words of the deaf.” The “inclusive elementary school” in Bengkala. While just one percent of the village’s population is completely deaf, Bengkala has earned its nickname thanks to its active community center of deaf residents and an “inclusive” elementary school with teachers who can use sign language. While far from where most of the island’s tourism is concentrated, Bengkala has slowly developed its own steady stream of visitors piqued by curiosity surrounding its famous moniker: the deaf village. Located in Bali’s northernmost regency, Buleleng, Bengkala Village is about a three-hour drive on a good day from the island’s Ngurah Rai Airport, 71 kilometers to the south. So, Asih stayed home and continued to feel isolated.Įverything changed when her mother learned that the “inclusive school” in village of Bengkala, just 12 kilometers from their village, would allow her daughter to enroll and better yet, teach her sign language.Īsih now knows how to read and write in Indonesian and, most significantly, has picked up “Kata Kolok,” a sign language used nowhere else in the world. With no interpreter at the school, there didn’t seem to be a point, her family thought - a justification common amongst families with disabled children in Indonesia.
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