Embracing the challenges of living with dyslexia

Shirleen Mwendwa Mugambi, a dyslexic, once had a hard time with shaping letters with the same formation. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Mutwiri say he is managing mild dyslexia. And he is grateful for his girlfriend who has helped him in the journey.
  • Though Shirleen had to repeat Class Three, the head teacher, after being convinced by the parents, recommended a counsellor for her.

Shirleen Mwendwa Mugambi, 14, who is in Grade Nine at Kitengela International School, started exhibiting signs of dyslexia at an early age.

According to her mother, Josephine Kinya, her milestones were delayed, but being first time parents, she and her husband thought it was normal.

Shirleen took her first baby step a month after her first birthday, later than her peers.

Her mother also noticed that she interchanged sounds in a word, saying ‘pipch’ instead of chips, 'bab' instead of dad, 'dag' instead of bag and ‘Njogore’ instead of Njoroge.

“For the longest time, she wore her shoes and slippers interchangeably, with the right shoe on the left leg and vice versa, and her shoe laces were rarely tied,” says Josephine.

When she finally joined school, she had a hard time with shaping letters with the same formation.

To her, the letter d, b, and p were similar to the number nine; same case to the letters 'w' and 'm'.

“When she could not do her homework without help, I would do so by holding her hand. Her handwriting was horrible and it was hard for her to draw a line or follow the lines in an exercise book,” her mother recalls.

CHANGING SCHOOLS

“However, she enjoyed colouring, picture reading, teaching us songs learnt in school and reciting poems, even though she kept forgetting some verses.”

Josephine vividly remembers how Shirleen’s teachers kept complaining and sending her notes on how her daughter couldn’t concentrate in class.

She appeared lazy, hardly completing her class work, and would mostly leave her homework books at school to avoid doing it.

As a result, Shirleen was moved to a different school because her parents felt that her needs were not properly addressed.

At the new school, the parents quickly realised that the issue was not the previous nor the one she had been transferred into.

Then at pre-unit, she wrote down words as they sounded when she read them; writing ‘regista’ in place of register and ‘internashional’ in place of international.

Fast forward; when she got to standard three, her parents enrolled her in weekday boarding school to help improve her performance, to no avail.

“We moved homes to be closer to her school. We had her stay at school for extra tuition and take homework with the teachers, but the more pressure we put on her, the more her academic performance deteriorated. She became the laughing stock of the class,” her mother says.

LAUGHING STOCK

“Some teachers made her spell on the blackboard, only to have the rest of the students laugh at her. Her books were coloured with red marks from the corrections the teachers were making beside her wrongly spelt words.

She was beaten for not completing her homework and given ugly labels, which crushed her self-esteem. We have called the school several times to chart the way forward, especially since her younger brother did better than her in spelling and writing.”

It was while at the fourth school, in Class Four going on to Five, that she got closer to getting help. It wasn’t smooth.

With her sights ahead and being a new student at the school, the interview was a Class Three test, which she failed miserably, scoring 26 marks out of 80, set as the cut point.

What followed were sour moods and tantrums, besides faking sickness to avoid going to school, as they had witnessed this a couple of times before.

Though Shirleen had to repeat the class, the head teacher, after being convinced by the parents, recommended a counsellor for her.

After a couple of sessions, they were referred to a special needs teacher. It was then that Shirleen was diagnosed as dyslexic.

“I cried a river,” says Josephine. “First because I felt guilty for putting her through so much trouble. But I also felt relieved that we had gotten help at last,” she says with a smile.

DYSLEXIA AMBASSADOR

After diagnosis, life became better. Shirleen got admitted to a different school administering the British curriculum, which has seen her performance improve tremendously.

Her mother has witnessed her daughter’s self-esteem improve, and Shirleen can now express herself confidently.

Like many gifted dyslexic kids, Shirleen is not any different. She is an excellent swimmer and drummer.

Recently, she pulled a surprise at a school Christmas concert, dancing ballet to her mother’s disbelief.

While enrolled in a modelling school dubbed ‘Little Miss Kenya’, the event saw her represent the country in Thailand for Prince/Princess International Festival, where she scooped the second runners up position and second position in the voice competition.

Her passion about environmental conservation has also seen her win an award in an event dubbed Green Kids Award, where she recycles old t-shirts and bedsheets to make tote bags.

That aside, young Shirleen is a self-proclaimed dyslexia ambassador, who has presented a petition to President Uhuru Kenyatta and the Ministry of Education to address the needs of the dyslexic child in Kenya.

“Our story has been a lesson,” says Josephine. “No kid should go through what Shirleen went through for a fault that is not their own.”

* * * *

Munene Mutwiri was five years old when he first started school. And like any other child, he had to read the alphabet, form words and sentences and count basic numbers.

However, his case was different. He had a lot of mispronunciations, performed poorly in Mathematics, and read some words backwards.

Once, in a Literature class, he read ‘flashback’ as ‘back flash,’ to the amusement of his classmates.

Most of the time, he would see the second name before the first, and mathematical formulae appeared as diagrams since numbers did not make a lot of sense to him, a problem he still encounters to date.

As a child, he preferred and loved when his teachers narrated stories rather than have him read them.

Now in his mid-20s, he still prefers listening to audiobooks to reading a text novel.

At home, his family took him to numerous eye clinics thinking he had an eye problem but deep inside, he knew his eyes were okay, and his reading problems had something to do with his brain.

“I would try to express myself through writing, but my ideas could not be directly translated into my words. Due to this contradiction with myself, I fell into depression. My family said it was teenagehood and I was taken to counselling.”

It was while undergoing counselling that he was diagnosed with mild dyslexia.

SISTER TAKES CHARGE

Mutwiri, for example, realised that he needed to see a diagram to easily translate information.

“I remember one day my sister had to send me at a specific shop on Luthuli Avenue. She explained for almost an hour how I walk there and identify the place, but the more she explained the more I got confused. Eventually, she took a pencil, drew a rough map and pointed out what I would see."

Even today, he is comfortable in doing household chores where he has a clear physical guideline on what he is doing and what will come next.

“I was 15 when he was born,” says his first born sister Purity Munene. “I postponed joining high school that year to be able to take care of him. Our parents were not always around, and as I was also a child, I thought he seemed like a normal baby.

I think if anyone was to notice his difficulties it would be our parents. But most of the time they were not around. And unfortunately, our mum could not read or write. So all this was new to everyone.”

While raising him alongside their mother, she never once thought of it as a learning disability.

“It’s difficult to see a challenge in your younger sibling,” she says. “I just thought that he was having difficulties in school, just as other children who really never get to score those high grades.”

EXTRA PRODUCTIVE

When he became a teenager and before he got diagnosed with dyslexia, Purity observes that Mutwiri was going through a rough patch in life, but the family thought it was the drama that comes with teenagehood.

It was after the diagnosis that they were able to understand him and tend better to his needs.

She points out how Mutwiri’s love for words was evident, even as a child.

“He was very talkative but he struggled in making out clear, understandable words. We always said he had a heavy tongue, and that's why he was struggling with his speech. He was afraid of water, and every time we would bathe him he would cry till the neighbours came to see [what was going on]. I think his mind always saw something that none of us was seeing.”

Even with such a history, his behaviour at the workplace has him labelled as a workaholic and a perfectionist, yet in real sense he has to work five times more to be at par with the rest.

“In campus, I had to write four, five rough copies before publishing an article on my blog. Before a presentation, I had to re-read a few times for my brain to get a clear understanding,” he says.

He also never had it easy while in primary school. "I remember this time in Class Two when my mathematics teacher shamed me in front of the class because my book looked messy. I really had difficulties drawing the parallel lines separating the squared mathematics book."

However, in Class Five, and at St Nicholas Boarding Primary School in Meru, his class teacher, Ms Mwirigi, started taking notice of him, devoting herself to giving him extra coaching and encouragement.

LONELINESS

With a smile, he recalls how a rug under his desk got him very uncomfortable as he revised for his KCPE examinations.

"I kept on checking on how the rug seemed so out of place and l felt so vulnerable as l could not move it away. Ms Mwirigi noticed my uneasiness and she requested someone to get rid of it. After the class, she called me and advised me that I should never be disturbed by physical misplacements, which at times might not be my fault."

His life, however, did not get better. A few years later, while attending Nkubu High School, he describes loneliness as his best friend.

He recalls how his Agriculture teacher, Mrs Muthamia, one day found him alone and hungry sitting below a tree.

Thinking he was sad that no one had visited him, she approached him to offer some consolation.

However, according to Munene, he was extremely happy that he had had a day to be alone and away from human contact.

With time, she came to understand his condition, teaching him Agriculture by use of symbols and illustrations.

“Even though I loved drawing and literature, I hated Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics and Biology because I never really understood anything.

LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Yet I had no choice because Chemistry and Biology were a must-read. When other students were busy discussing, analysing and finding simple methods to find a solution, I was busy cramming as much as I could. I remember one time when I was asked to solve a chemistry equation. Though I manage to solve it, I could not explain what had happened."

Fast forward to campus and he found himself spending most of his time pretending to write when all he was actually doing was trying to repeat what the lecturer just said.

Studying public relations, and with his poor handwriting, he looks back amused at how one of his lecturers once called his parents and asked them to buy him( a laptop for his assignments.

"Over the years, I have been able to manage my mild dyslexia. Some days are difficult than others. Most of all I thank my girlfriend, Faith, who understood me and has helped me in this journey."