Little girl’s hearing aids snatched
Five-year-old Vuyo Ncita was playing with friends outside her home when an unknown little boy snatched her hearing aids.
|||Cape Town - Five year-old Vuyo Ncita was playing with friends outside her home in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, at the weekend when an unknown little boy snatched her hearing aids from her ears.
Her mother Nondumiso has plastered posters around her community, offering a reward for anyone with information about where her daughter’s hearing aids can be found.
Ncita said she has a suspicion the boy might have thought the aids were earphones and therefore ran off with them.
Vuyo was diagnosed with profound bilateral sensory-neural hearing loss at the Carel du Toit School for Hearing Impaired Chat Centre when she was four.
Without her hearing aids she struggles to hear and converse. It costs from around R20 000 per aid.
“I have started putting up posters asking if anyone has information. It is important for my child’s development that she finds her hearing aids.
“If no one comes forward, I will have to get her new ones. I just don’t know how I am going to do that yet. Other people can’t do anything with it, but it’s her world,” Nondumiso said.
School principal Ruth Bourne said the school accommodated her in their beginners’ class, which introduced her to the world of sound.
Since then Vuyo has blossomed into a bubbly, enthusiastic learner with a lot of “spark”.
“With the help of her hearing aids, she has made tremendous progress in speech and language development as well as academic progress.
“However, on Saturday her world collapsed when hearing aids were taken from her ears by an unknown boy while she was playing outside her house in Khayelitsha,” Bourne said.
Ncita walked up and down the streets with a megaphone, asking people to help them recover the hearing aids.
Neighbours also helped to search, but it was in vain.
Bourne said Vuyo and her mother are extremely distressed by the incident.
“Unfortunately, the family could not afford insurance. The Carel du Toit Centre hopes to be able to fit Vuyo with loaned hearing aids until it is possible to replace her own aids,” Bourne said.
A similar incident happened to another pupil at the school about four years ago.
The pupil had a cochlear implant that was snatched by a boy while she was walking home.
The school had to raise funds to replace the implant, which costs about R200 000.
The Carel du Toit Centre offers an all-encompassing service to teach hearing-impaired children to speak through natural learning experiences and parental guidance. The aim of the centre’s intervention is for hearing-impaired children to enter mainstream schools and have adequate spoken language to integrate into society.
People who would like to help Vuyo hear again can contact the school on 021 938 5303 or e-mail RBourne@careldutoit.co.za
francesca.villette@inl.co.za
Cape Times