Tag Archive: Hearing Loss

When I first received my Peace Corps invitation to serve in Cameroon over two years ago, one of my first reactions was, “Cameroon?  But there is no cochlear implant center there?  Did Peace Corps really say it’s OK for me to serve there?  If they say so, then no problem.  I can just get remote […]

I live in a country where receiving a cochlear implant is not any option for anyone except for a very small number of people. There is not one hospital in Cameroon that offers cochlear implants. Cochlear implants are not even known by most healthcare workers. When I gave a training to healthcare workers at the […]

Since Peace Corps’ inception in 1961, over 60 deaf Americans have successfully served in Peace Corps.   Additional 138 Americans with some degree of hearing loss have served too*.  Now that I have been in Cameroon for almost a year, I can certainly share how my experiences in serving the Peace Corps as a person with […]

When I met with a director of a school for the deaf in Bamenda, she said to me “If we could have [cochlear implants] in Cameroon, it would solve so many problems.” While I agreed fully that cochlear implants would make a huge difference in the lives of many deaf people, I never fully grasped […]

If one asked my parents 25 years ago yesterday where I would be today as a young adult, they would have not been able to answer. December 21st, 1989 was the day when I first received a cochlear implant as part of a clinical trial at New York University as it was not yet approved […]