Deaf Genocide

Triumphant day today - finished the HIV/AIDS funding application and e-mailed it from my laptop. Most excellent considering Léon had estimated it would take another week! Huzah! :op

Really proud of that achievement.

We have a dead weird flyer in the office. There's a lot of political argument going on at the moment in Europe, and especially the UK (where they're about to pass a law), against geneticists preventing Deaf families from choosing to have a Deaf baby. It's a very hot debate and one which I won't go into here because it would take for ever.

Anyway, this flyer that's in our office is from Denmark (I think) and depicts a bunch of white, presumably Deaf, kids piled up like genocide victims with the title in bold: 'DEAF OR DEAD?' The idea links genetic engineering, and the eradication of deafness, to the eradication of a cultural and linguistic minority group.

Back in Britain I probably wouldn't have blinked at that, it's a message that's been bandied about for a long time. But I bet when they designed that flyer they never once thought that a Deaf person in Rwanda, who had actually lived through genocide, would pick it up. The looks on the faces of my colleagues were not so amused. Many of my colleagues have lost their parents and other family members in 1994. It does give you a different perspective on certain advertising methods.

Moving on. Léon helped me beat the price of the bed I wanted down from FRW 100,000 to 80,000, which is what I wanted to pay for it in the first place :) So grateful for that. Hopefully going buy it on Tuesday. Helps to have a Rwandese friend who likes shopping ;) He said he had the same problem in Ethiopia, he'd get charged more because they knew he was an outsider.

Also got hugged on the way into work today! Two women were walking along with three of the most gorgeous little children. I smiled and the kids ran over to shake my hand. They're generally fascinated by white skin - one threw his arms around me and hugged me! :op