For as long as he can recall, Asaph Mwangi dreaded morning because it meant going to school.
Every torturous day seemed to be a repeat of all the previous ones — the classteacher would begin by calling out the attendance register and as he got closer to his name, Mwangi would start to sweat, his mouth would dry up, and his heart would start to race.
“When I heard my name, I would stand up, like we were all expected to, but by the time I managed to say, ‘Present, teacher’, he would have called out five other names while I struggled to say these two simple words,” he recalls.
Thirty-five-year-old Mwangi grew up stammering, a condition that made him speak with involuntary pauses and repetitions. This always attracted loud bursts of laughter from other pupils, which embarrassed him and erased his self-esteem.
Being asked to read aloud was especially distressing because, try as he would, he just could not complete a sentence without stammering. It was the same case whenever a teacher asked a question.
Even though he knew the answer, which was often, he did not dare raise his hand because he knew that the clear answer in his mind would not form on his lips. This was especially frustrating because he was a bright pupil and often topped his class.
“Before I decided to give up participating in class, I raised my hand two or three times, but I just clammed up,” Mwangi says.
His teachers did not understand this. One of them even thought that he was just being cheeky and accused him of not wanting to share his knowledge with his classmates.
Nobody seemed to understand what was “wrong” with him, and most of his peers shunned him. As a result, his social life in and out of school was non-existent.
“I had no friends since I found it difficult to strike a conversation with others. The only people I felt at ease with were my parents and siblings, two of whom also stammered,” says Mwangi, the first-born in a family of eight children.
Even at Sunday school, he found no comfort — he could not recite memory verses and poems like the other children and eventually stopped attending. Instead, he would attend the adult service with his grandfather. At least here, no one expected him to stand up and speak.
But even after completing primary school, the ridicule did not let up, following him to secondary school, where he had few friends. He could not participate in drama festivals or the debating club, as he would have wanted to. Many are the times he owned up to mistakes he had not made and got punished for something he had not done.
As he explains, he found it easier to simply say, “Yes” instead of trying to defend himself when he knew that he could not get out the necessary words.
But where he failed socially, he excelled academically. His performance in class was so impressive that he was made a prefect while in Form Two, something that he says boosted his self-esteem since he earned the respect of the other students.
However, the responsibility came with challenges that he had been grappling with all his life — reading out aloud.
“All prefects were expected to give weekly reports during assembly, but I couldn’t. I tried to once but regretted it for a long time.”
So, when it was his turn, he would simply say, “So far so good”, with great difficulty.
Mwangi completed secondary school in 1994 and scored a B grade. He only learnt that he could control his stammer when he joined Maseno University in 1997.
“I was studying for a Bachelor of Education in Special Education and was in my second year. I stumbled on this information while studying a unit on learning difficulties,” he explains.
One of these difficulties was stammering. Excited, Mwangi read as much as he could about the condition, including how it could be managed.
For instance, he discovered that there are relaxation techniques that could take away the anxiety that came over him whenever he was expected to talk.
“I learnt that talking slowly was one of the main keys to managing my condition. I tried it, and to my amazement, the stammer was less pronounced,” he says.
When he graduated in 2000, Mwangi got a job at Kestrel Manor, a school for children with learning and developmental disabilities. Even though he could speak with less difficulty, he still struggled to have a normal conversation with other people and was still overly self-conscious, especially when meeting people for the first time or when expected to have a lengthy conversation, especially with his pupils’ parents. Fortunately, the principal was aware of his problem and would talk to them on his behalf whenever there was a need.
The turning point came in 2004 when Mwangi heard of the Nairobi Stammering Support Group (NSSG). When he turned up for a meeting, he found 60 other people with a problem like his.
“It felt liberating to know that I wasn’t the only one who found it difficult to have normal, everyday conversations that others take for granted,” he says.
It is also here that he met Emma Shah, a speech and language therapist who offered her services for free to the group members.
“Emma took us through the breathing and relaxation techniques that I had read about but had not quite mastered. But most importantly, I learnt how to maintain eye contact, which is very important in interpersonal interaction.”
Today, Mwangi, a father-of-two, is articulate and comes across as confident. You are unlikely to notice any lapses in his speech.
This, he says, did not happen overnight. In fact, his is a work in progress and every day he works on ways to improve his speech.
“Effective communication is key, especially in a profession such as mine since my main objective is to pass knowledge and instil confidence in these children,” he explains.
As a teacher for children with learning and developmental disabilities, Mwangi has a few students in his class who stammer or struggle to pronounce words due to various learning disabilities. His experience has come in handy.
“I allow them to complete their sentences, no matter how long it takes,” he says, adding that this helps to build their self-esteem.
He also places them in reading groups with those who do not stammer. This, he explains, helps them to pick up sounds faster, especially when they hear them repeatedly.
In his free time, he and other members of his support group give talks in various forums to create awareness about stammering.
Unlike Mwangi, most members of his support group have taken up jobs that do not involve a lot of social communication. For instance, Evelyn Kamau is a researcher who joined NSSG early last year. Evelyn says that she spent most of her childhood indoors with her siblings.
“I discovered that I couldn’t speak as fluently as other children when I was six years old,” she says.
“Some would help me to complete my sentences, others would stare at me as I struggled to form words, while others just looked away, either embarrassed or impatient.”
So she learnt to keep a low profile. However, with the help of others who grew up with the same problem, she is gradually learning to come out of her shell.
Mwangi says that with awareness and proper support, stammering should not prevent anyone from pursuing their dreams.
“It is not a handicap, it can be managed, but it is important for those who don’t have the problem to support those who have it — but as long as there are those who don’t understand the problem, the ridicule won’t go away,” he says.
