Jigme is 15 years old (born in 2004), and has a moderate/severe hearing loss on the right side and a much worse hearing loss on the left side. He did not think that his left ear would work well with a hearing aid, so he was fitted with one digital hearing aid on his right side in October 2018. His goals at the time were to hear people talking, especially family members who speak but do not sign. In particular he wanted to be able to be able to communicate with his cousins who are at high school.

A week after he was fitted he said he loves hearing the sounds of birds chirping, and that his favourite sound was people laughing because it makes him feel happy. This time, the entire conversation was spoken, and the sign interpreter just translated from Dzongkha (his home language) into English. He also spoke some very basic English.

Later in May 2019 he told how much he loved his hearing aid, and was talking all the time with his cousins and friends. However, when he went home to his farming family during winter holidays he lost his hearing aid. He was sad about this.  He would soon be fitted with another hearing aid. He says that this time he won’t be wearing it in the fields any more. He is talking more, and has a group of boys at the school who are trying to learn English, their ‘teacher’ at the moment is a boy called Purna Singh Ghalley, who is also wearing aids fitted by the HHfB team.