Deaf and dumb and at the pinnacle of varsity career

• The disease made him completely deaf and also robbed him of his speech ability.
• His appointment at Moi University made him the first deaf lecturer in Kenya.
• In the US, life took another turn for the better; for the first time in his life, he was given an interpreter

Had a kind missionary couple not changed the course of his life, Dr Michael Ndurumo reckons he would most likely have ended up a carpenter, a tailor, a cobbler or a stonemason.

After all, he argues, these are the remnant occupations society has reserved for people like him who have disabilities.

But, thanks to the couple, his life took a dramatic turn for the better. They threw him a rare lifeline that enabled him to explore his God-given talents and abilities despite being deaf and dumb.

Today, feted at home and abroad, he is one of the few Africans who have overcome handicaps to rise to the pinnacle of their careers.

Thus, Dr Ndurumo, 56, is a shining example of what personal determination and focus can do for one.

More importantly, he is living proof to society that, given the chance, the encouragement and the necessary support, people with disabilities can be productive, rather than a burden.

“I have learnt that there is no limitation to the human ability,” says the senior lecturer at Moi University of Eldoret.

“Had I thought of myself as a lesser human being because of being deaf, then I would have surely ended up a burden to society instead.”  

Born in Marua Village, Nyeri, in 1952, Ndurumo in December 1960 contracted meningitis, an infection of the brain membranes. The disease made him completely deaf and also robbed him of his speech ability.

He was just eight years old then and a Standard One pupil at Muruguru primary school in Nyeri.

It seemed to him that the disease had sealed his fate and consigned him to lesser vocations in life. But his parents did not give up on him.

Whereas others would have lost the hope of educating such a child, Ndurumo’s condition seemed to have injected in his parents a steely determination to have their son succeed in his studies — and in life.  

“Were it not for my parents, I would be nothing today,” recalls the father of two. “They were poor, but they gave me the greatest gift a parent can give a child — love and understanding.

They did not reject me as other parents do their children with disabilities. They made sure that I went to school and achieved the best in life, my condition notwithstanding.”

There being no primary school for the deaf near home and his parents being so poor, young Ndurumo was forced to study with normal children.