A dancer who listens with her heart

To the serene music that echoes through the hall, a cute girl wearing a pink dress floats like a butterfly, flying over a wide green and floral field.

While watching her ballet performance I would not have imagined that this girl cannot hear the music. She gave no hint that she is deaf. I only discovered this fact after her performance, when I met her dance teacher.

The girl’s name is Sergelen, which means cheerful and bright. Sergelen is a talented 12-year-old girl, who resembles her name. Even though she can’t hear or speak, she can make herself easily understood to her family and friends and she has a strong passion to dance. She can dance in any style, like ballet or traditional Mongolian.

I was amazed to see her performing contortion too. On her own, she started practicing contortion a year ago after she saw one performing on TV.

Sergelen started dancing when she was around 4-5 years old and now she is a 5th grader of primary school.

“My dream is to become a great dancer who designs and makes her own dance dresses. Dancing makes me feel so good,” she writes in Cyrillic.

“She drew herself dancing with other children and made her wish understood to her teacher when she was in kindergarten. Her teacher couldn’t refuse her wish and trained her in dancing,” the mother Khishigsuren talks. 

Sergelen’s current dance teacher trained with her since she was 7 and she transforms the music into numbers and steps and teaches her how to dance. The girl remembers all the steps in her mind and dances beautifully listening to the music not with her ears, but with her heart.

“The most respectful person in my life is my dance teacher and I love her very much," Sergelen wrote in her notebook.

“My girl is a very talented girl. She can dance all kinds of dance and she can draw very well too. She even does her makeup herself. She won silver medal from last year’s “Vision Star” festival by performing Mongolian traditional dance. She loves to dance” Sergelen’s dance teacher Ms. Nyamdavaa talks. 

Sergelen also draws very well and she won prize from World Vision’s drawing competition. She drew herself with her pink ballet dress and a stage with the participants where she performed at “Vision Star” music festival of World Vision Mongolia recently.

Sergelen is a registered child of World Vision Khovd programme area. She lives with her parents and 3 siblings in Khovd province. It is the western province, located 1580 km away from Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. Her parents make a living by farming from early spring through late autumn. During the frigid winter, they stay at home without work. 

Sergelen had a very bad laryngitis when she was only 5-months-old and she was rigorously treated for that condition. 

Her mother thinks that she lost her hearing at that time due to the antibiotic treatment. The family discovered that Sergelen could not hear when she was around 2-years-old. When they discover that she couldn’t hear, it was a painful time for the family. However, Khishigsuren never lost faith in her daughter and decided to support and encourage her talents and interests. Since then the whole family has supported Sergelen to nurture her talent and participate in competitions.

Several months ago, Sergelen participated in “Mongolians Got Talent”, a nationwide competition and one of the judges, Deegii, said, “It is a great example of showing one can accomplish great things if one has a real passion for it.”

Kind-hearted people who watched the show helped Sergelen find a hospital to perform the surgery. The hospital paid 50% of the surgery cost and many other people helped, the family still needed to have some loan to pay rest of the money for her surgery.

Sergelen recently had a cochlear implant surgery to restore her hearing and her wish is to listen to the music and speak with her family and friends. Even though the surgery went well, her speaking ability will largely depend on speech therapy.

She needs speech therapy for at least 2 years in order to be able to speak. Because there is no specialist available in the countryside, Sergelen will need to stay in Ulaanbaatar for her treatment.

This will require her family to rent apartment and live in the city for 2 years. The hospital will cover the cost of the speech therapy for the first year, but the family needs to pay the 2nd year speech therapy cost of 6500 USD themselves.

Sergelen has an incredible talent and determination and she has achieved what many thought was impossible.

I believe God will make a way for Sergelen to accomplish her dream to become great dancer and will renew her hearing and speaking ability.