Patrick Atuonah does not know exactly how he became deaf.

"I remember playing with my friends, and seeing my mother coming," he said. "I knew my mother was angry. She had a stick in her hand."

In Nigeria, boys who did not obey their mothers were paddled with sticks.

"I knew I was in trouble," said Atuonah.

He took his punishment as bravely as he could. But in the middle of his spanking, he realized something was wrong.

"I can't hear!" he cried. "I can't hear!"

He put his fingers inside his ears and rubbed furiously.

His mother was alarmed. So that's why her son had not come when she called him!

She put down the stick and called the neighbors. They gathered around Patrick. Why couldn't he hear? The neighbors poured warm oil into Patrick's ears. Later, his father took him to the hospital. But nothing worked.

Atuonah had become deaf.

He was four years old.

Growing Up

As a boy: Atuonah, far left, growing up, and his friends in the Boy Scouts. The man in the center was the troop leader.

Atuonah grew up in Onitsha, a town in eastern Nigeria in western Africa. He did not know any other deaf children. He went to elementary school with hearing students. He had to sit in the first row because he was deaf.

"I hated it," he said. "It was embarrassing."

He just wanted to be like the other kids.

In some ways, he was like other kids because he could talk. He still speaks his native language, Ibo, so well that many people think he is hearing. The other students knew he was deaf though. They often teased him about it.

"In Nigeria, deaf people are often scorned," said Atuonah. "The word for deaf in Ibo means "cursed by the devil."

But he persevered.

"It is amazing how the body adapts," he said. "I did not have ears that worked, but I had eyes and hands. I could still learn."

In fact, Atuonah learned fast.

He got all As in elementary school and passed the test for an elite private high school.

"The teachers in the high school didn't know I was deaf," Atuonah remembered. He liked that. He was determined to hide his deafness. "I got to sit in the back row!" he said.

The work was more difficult in high school, and Atounah could not lipread the teacher. He had to study very hard.

The War

Atuonah was 14 years old when war broke out in his country. His land-the eastern part of Nigeria-proclaimed itself a separate nation. It became the country of Biafra. The rest of Nigeria, under the leadership of the north, united to stop Biafra from leaving the nation.

"First they bombed us," he remembered.

The bombs fell on Onitsha, his hometown. Atuonah learned that his family had fled. At first, all remained quiet at his school. Then one day, as Atuonah was walking with his friends, they were stopped by Biafran soldiers. The soldiers had a special job-to force young men to fight in the army.

"I had no choice," Atuonah remembered. "I told them I was deaf, but they did not care."

The solders sent him to a training camp for soldiers. Atuonah got a uniform and a gun. After four months, he was sent to Onitsha with the other Biafran soldiers. His mission was to defend his hometown from the rest of Nigeria.

He fought for two years.

By the end of the war, the battles were bloody and the gunfire never ceased. He and the other soldiers were outnumbered and surrounded. Some of his friends were wounded. Some were killed.

"Our orders were to shoot the soldiers who could not retreat," he remembered. "If we did not shoot them, they would be tortured by the enemy." When his friend was mortally wounded and begged Atuonah to shoot him, he did.

Atuonah was wounded, too. A fragment from a bullet ricocheted and lodged in his wrist. There was nothing to be done about it. He tried to stop the bleeding, and he continued to fight. The wound was not his worst problem. The soldiers had run out of food and water. Still they kept fighting.

"The ceasefire came on January 12, 1970," he remembered.

Perhaps Atuonah was relieved to put down his gun and surrender.

Returning Home

The land that had tried to become Biafra was in ruins. Atuonah walked the streets of his destroyed city. When he found his house, it was ransacked and riddled by bullet holes. He cleaned up what he could and waited for his family. Six months later, they arrived. Two of his sisters had died during the war, but his mother and father and four other brothers and sisters were still alive.

They were all glad to be together.

But their struggle was not over.

Famine wracked the land.

Atuonah learned how to help his family survive.

"We would eat big rats and lizards," he remembered. "Sometimes we killed them with a stick. Other times we trapped them."

They had no tools to make traps. So they made them from the materials of the earth.

"We would dig a hole in the ground, cover the hole with small sticks, and place food in the middle of the sticks. When an animal came to eat the food, the small sticks would give way, and the animal would fall in the hole and not be able to get out."

The townspeople also foraged in untended farmers' fields. Once he dug up some long abandoned yams.

"We kept ourselves alive," he said.

Off to America

Atuonah returned to high school, graduated, and applied to the University of Nigeria. Again he was accepted. But this time, he could not hide his deafness.

On the job: Atuonah at work in the United States.

"They told me that a deaf person could not possibly stay in the university," he said. "I was dismissed."

A cousin told him about Gallaudet College in America. He made the decision to attend and arrived in America in 1977.

"Before when I thought of America, I thought of cowboys," said Atuonah. "But when I arrived here, I saw it wasn't like that at all."

He had to adjust-first to the USA and then to Deaf culture. He had never seen so many deaf people before.

"It seemed to be all flying hands," he remembered.

Before he knew it, he had graduated, gotten a job, and met and married fellow student Sanremi LaRue. Now they have two children.

Atuonah said that he wants his children to be in contact with Nigeria and Ibo culture, but he does not want to live there.

"In some ways, life has been very good to me," said Atuonah. "I am always happy here, but I feel Nigeria is my home."

Photos courtesy of Patrick Atuonah

Want to learn more about Nigeria? Check out these Web sites:
CIA Factbook on Nigeria
The Library of Congress
NigeriaWeb
Nigeria Overiview