As Zambia schools take on climate change, one teen is spreading the word in sign language

KASAMA, Zambia– Every morning, Bridget Chanda places her prosthetic legs next to her bed, puts on her stockings, and pushes the remains of her limbs into the prosthetics as best she can. After six years she no longer fits well and finds it painful to stand or walk for long periods of time, but it doesn’t bother her much.

“I still manage somehow,” he said. “I’m a girl with a mission.”

Chanda, 18, intends to help educate Zambia’s deaf community about climate change. As the southern African nation has suffered increasingly frequent extreme weather conditions, including its current severe drought, it has prompted the Zambian government to include more climate change education in its school curriculum.

But for that to be shared with the deaf community, it’s up to people like Chanda to help translate, and it’s a task that’s made more difficult because sign language doesn’t include many weather-related terms.

She is a student at Chileshe Chepela Special School in Kasama, northern Zambia, where many students are deaf or hard of hearing. After Chanda enrolled there in 2022, learning sign language was a way for her to fit in and bond with those schoolmates, even though she is not deaf herself. Around the same time, climate change was becoming a more topical issue in the country, and Chanda, who finds it disconcerting that her hometown in the south, near Lusaka, has been ravaged by drought while Kasama waits an excellent harvest, I wanted to talk about it.

“Climate change affects our way of life,” he said.

The country has been suffering from severe food shortages as water became scarce, prompting the president to declare a national emergency in February.

Chanda has served as an interpreter while climate farming expert Elizabeth Motale visits communities and schools to educate people about climate change. On a visit to a garden outside Chanda’s school, she waved as Motale showed students how drip irrigation brings precious water exactly where plants need it. The students smiled and laughed as they pierced a plastic bottle to drip water onto the roots of the plants.

Chanda has even taught Motale some sign language to use when an interpreter is not available.

“Bridget has been a great blessing to me,” Motale said.

Sign language is not recognized as an official language in Zambia, but the government has taken steps to ensure its recognition and has made it mandatory that climate change education also be taught in sign language. But with the language lagging behind, it can be a challenge to teach new concepts.

Chanda remembers struggling to find the words to explain mulching, for example (adding organic material to soil to help trap moisture) or climate adaptation, the ways people can adapt to more extreme weather conditions.

“Sometimes it’s hard,” Chanda said. “Sometimes I have to finger spell and when I miss a letter or two, some deaf students find it difficult.”

The Campaign for Women’s Education (CAMFED), a pan-African movement promoting girls’ education, launched a new climate education program in schools in March, led by young female graduates. The programme, in partnership with the ministries of education of Zambia and Zimbabwe, aims to help young people, particularly marginalized girls, build climate resilience and explore green careers.

Part of the climate education that CAMFED wants to promote is practical. She runs a farm mentoring program that aims to promote climate-smart techniques, such as drip irrigation that uses less water, and teaches entrepreneurial skills that can help young women launch agricultural businesses that use those skills.

Helena Chandwe, business manager at CAMFED, said it is important to improve the way information is delivered to students with special needs, and that means interpreters who can convey it correctly and with enough context.

Chanda hopes to join the farm guide program after completing her education.

His lower legs were amputated after he developed gangrene at age 7. Stigmatized and harassed at school in Lusaka, she eventually ended up in Chileshe, where she found a much more welcoming environment in a place that mixes students with special needs with regular students.

Her prosthetics do not prevent her from carrying her friend, Juliet Nankamba, in Juliet’s wheelchair. The two often sit next to each other in class, share books, and participate in class discussions and assignments. When she is asked about her friendship with Bridget, Juliet smiles, laughs, and makes a peace sign.

Chanda fights back tears as she describes how CAMFED has helped her with her tuition and boarding school fees. She was appointed director at the beginning of the year and said she dreams of one day becoming an orthopedic surgeon and going far away from Zambia to make her mother proud.

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