Mulan, September 2017, 17 years old
Mulan in January 2008
In 2008, we met 8-year old Mulan Lekaranga on Kokwa Island in Lake Baringo. Grace Koinale, the nursery school teacher in Kirepari Village told us that Mulan had been deaf since birth and although he came to her nursery school, she didn't know how to teach him. She thought that he was a bright boy and asked if we could help. Assessments of Mulan's hearing and cognitive ability indicated that he could benefit from attending school and so with a scholarship from FKSW, he was enrolled in Ochii Primary School for the Hearing Impaired in the town of Tenges. Mulan has been a good student and over the past 9 years, he has learned to communicate in sign language and has studied other traditional subjects at Ochii.
This coming November, at the age of 17, Mulan will graduate from the 8th grade! He plans to go on to secondary school next year, and FKSW will continue to support him with a scholarship for the next four years. We visited Mulan at Ochii in late September. He told us, with signs translated by his teacher, that eventually he hopes to become a teacher of the hearing impaired.
Mulan in February 2009 at Ochii Primary School