Echoes of Discrimination

By TERRY MWIHIA 

Second Year BA Journalism and Mass Communication Student,  Chuka University 

On most mornings, he wakes before sunrise, packs his lunch, and leaves home with quiet determination. By evening, he often returns the same way he left silent, hopeful, but unemployed.

For a man who cannot hear, discrimination has never been silent. It reverberates. It echoes. He was born deaf. But he was not born incapable.

Growing up at Kerugoya School for the Deaf and later at Kuja School for the Deaf, excellence followed him naturally. Prize giving days were overwhelming so many awards that his mother sometimes helped him carry them back to the dormitory. Leadership seemed stitched into him. In college, he even vied for student leadership, finishing third among both deaf and hearing students.

“I’ve always known I can lead,” he says.

From a young age, he dreamed of becoming an engineer. Mathematics and science were his world. But ambition often collides with systems not designed for everyone. When he joined college to pursue technical studies, he quickly realized that higher education offered little accommodation. There was no sign language interpreter. Group discussions excluded him. He borrowed notes and studied alone. In courses heavy with mathematics, isolation became his greatest obstacle. Eventually, he failed exams and dropped out.

He tried again at another institution that admitted deaf students. But the facilities were poor, and fees were overwhelming. His mother, a single parent supporting two children, could not sustain both his education and his sister’s schooling. Once again, his studies ended unfinished. “I know I’m bright,” he insists quietly.

For a brief moment, life seemed to align. In 2018 he joined a government sponsored youth employment program and studied an IT related course. He later secured an attachment at Huduma Centre. It was the best year of his life.

He wore suits to work. Delivered assignments diligently. His supervisor trusted him so much that he bought him lunch regularly and even gifted him a shirt. There, his ability spoke louder than silence. But attachments end. He returned home unemployed, older, capable, but still unseen.

For persons living with disabilities in Kenya, his story is not isolated. Recent 2023–2024 estimates place unemployment among persons with disabilities between 33 percent and 60 percent significantly higher than the national average. Youth with disabilities face even steeper barriers, particularly in competitive job markets that prioritize fluent verbal communication and rigid academic qualifications.

In May 2025, Kenya enacted the Persons with Disabilities Act, introducing stricter enforcement measures. The law mandates that all employers with 20 or more employees must reserve at least 5 percent of their workforce for persons with disabilities. Employers are legally required to provide reasonable accommodation including workplace modifications and assistive support. Non-compliance can attract fines of up to KSh 2 million, with severe violations leading to imprisonment.

The Act also introduced incentives: private employers can apply for a 25 percent tax deduction on salaries paid to employees with disabilities and a 50 percent deduction for costs incurred in modifying workplaces. On paper, inclusion is no longer optional. In practice, opportunity still depends on everyday attitudes.

He carries a quiet wish: to live in a country were communicating in sign language is not unusual. “It gets frustrating when I look for a job and someone asks how I will work, how I will communicate with co-workers,” he says. “It feels like they already decided I cannot.”

The discrimination is not confined to construction sites. At banks, tellers have accused him of ignoring them irritated that he does not respond to questions he cannot hear. In hospitals, explaining symptoms becomes an exhausting exchange of gestures and hurried notes, hoping he is understood correctly. Even seeking medical care can feel like negotiation.

While national estimates suggest that up to 40 percent of persons with disabilities may be employed depending on methodology, he questions who those numbers represent. “Even in that percentage,” he says, “how many are people who are deaf or visually impaired?”

Inclusion, he has learned, is not only about quotas. It is about communication. With a long-standing passion for construction, he began seeking work at building sites not as an engineer, but as a mason’s helper. He carried stones. Mixed cement. Took on the smallest manual tasks.

Finding work proved harder than lifting bricks. Each time a foreman realized he was deaf, the response was familiar. “There is no space.”

Some times there was laughter. Some times impatience. Some times quiet dismissal. His written English was mocked, misunderstood as broken rather than recognized as structured differently from spoken language.

One rejection remains unforgettable. While seeking attachment, a supervisor told him there were no vacancies. The following day, his mother visited the same office. Suddenly, there was space. That was when the echoes grew loudest. The law may promise inclusion. But enforcement does not always reach dusty construction sites or small offices where decisions are made quickly and quietly.

Yet once he is given an opportunity, doubt disappears. At construction sites where he secures work, masons compete to have him as their helper. He is efficient. Disciplined. Relentless. The problem has never been his hands or legs only assumptions about his ears.

Before he is allowed to prove himself, however, he must first dismantle suspicion. Many mornings he leaves home with packed lunch and hope. Many evenings he returns without work. The questions repeat: How will you work if you cannot hear? How will you communicate? So, when he is hired, he overworks determined to prove that disability is not inability.

Now in his thirties, he watches agemates advance securing stable jobs, building families, gaining financial independence. He remains hopeful but carries quiet shame. Even relationships have not been spared. Potential partners cite financial instability. Denied work because of disability, denied companionship because of unemployment.  The cycle tightens. Still, he wakes before sunrise. Still, he packs his lunch. Still, he believes.

“I know my potential,” he says. “This is not where I am supposed to be.”

Kenya’s laws speak of quotas, accommodation, and protection. But until inclusion becomes ordinary in offices, hospitals, banks, and construction sites stories like his will continue unfolding quietly across the country. For a man who cannot hear, discrimination is not silent. It echoes. And yet, so does resilience.