Homeless and Handicapped in Cite Soleil

In the aftermath of the earthquake, doctors amputated thousands of limbs as a quick-fix procedure that would prevent infection. You see handicapped people everywhere these days in Port-au-Prince: an infant with one leg using a walker to stand for the first time on the edge of a soccer field; a legless man in a wheelchair cruising alongside the traffic on Delmas, going 20 miles an hour, swerving out of the way of rubble. Getting around Port-au-Prince on two legs was hard enough before the earthquake, before the buildings spilled out on to the street. So many limps, so many ghost limbs: uncomfortable reminders of the cost of survival. But some people have being dealing with handicaps in Haiti long before the quake. The other day Stan and I arrived in a Cite Soleil camp to interview a contact I had made a few weeks before. The camp, as it turns out, is run by a local association of the handicapped and the elderly and tries to cater to their specific needs. We interviewed Kevin, a thoughtful young man of 28 with a deformed arm who identified himself as the coordinator for Solidartie des Handicapes Moteur, a neighborhood organization that has been helping the handicapped since 1996. It was founded in reply to discriminatory treatment people with special needs were receiving in the neighborhood: verbal abuse, sexual abuse, general disregard of their human rights. I imagine social exclusion of handicapped folks happens in every culture, and Kevin gave an example of a man (now the president of the association) who was so afraid of how people treated him that he hardly ever left his family's house. In addition, the materials needed by the handicapped in Haiti are sorely lacking. What few wheelchairs are available are designed for limited indoor hospital use and absolutely inadequate for getting around a city like Port-au-Prince. They break too easily to ever be passed on to others. Canes and crutches are also in short supply. Solidartie des Handicapes Moteur (SOHAMO)worked to find materials like this, they helped the sick and elderly pay for prescriptions, and they even were running a small mirco-credit program when the earthquake struck. The organizations resources were destroyed, but a sense of solidarity among the members remained, and two weeks after the wake the leaders established a camp so that the elderly and the handicapped could help look after one another. There are over 300 people who live there. It's difficult but the camp tries to accommodate special needs: it is built on a cement lot and the tents are laid out to allow wheelchairs to pass easily between them. Kevin said that any group who wants to offer them aid or relief has to meet with them first to make sure that the services are accessible: for example, the showers come with seats for those who cannot stand.

The earthquake, Kevin said, is changing the way Haitians look at the handicapped. Everyone knows someone who lost a limb or was permanent disabled after the quake. It could be their children, their parents, their friends. So they have more patience now, he said, and they show more respect. The earthquake has also created a space of revindication: the demands of the handicapped are heard much more loudly, and it is time for the state to assume more responsibility for this portion of the population. Although Kevin says the earthquake brought nothing good for him personally, for the Haitian handicapped, this moment of tragedy might transform into a opportunity.