This is J, a young man who works at the State Secretariat for the Integration of Handicapped People. (SEIPH) In fact, he was responsible for the collection of data for the department in the aftermath of the catastrophe. Almost two months have passed since the earthquake, so I’m sitting down with this young, bearded academic, in the simple hope that I might be able to add to my articles by including statistics that are interesting, previously unpublished, exclusive, revealing ....

A man of letters, of the theatre, this J. You can hear it in his accents in all the right places – his French is a beautiful thing to hear. But I didn’t come here to see a play; I really need numbers to help me understand the scope of the catastrophe. So, after several minutes of casual chitchat, the first half of our beer downed, I get right to the point.

J, I would like to have all the data, all the statistics on disabilities and the condition of people with disabilities in Haiti, especially since the 12th of January.

If I understand you correctly, he replies in a serious tone, you want clear and precise numbers. Yes, you understand me completely, I say in an equally serious tone. It is difficult to explain the Haitian situation to you, a foreigner, he says, a bit disconcerted. Oh, really? Why? I ask him, perplexed. It’s embarrassing, he continues, to tell all this to a Canadian ... I find it strange telling you all this because you will never be able to understand the truth.

The truth? I ask, curious. So he tells me the honest truth: There aren’t any statistics; no census has ever been taken in relation to disabilities. Never.

I repeat the word almost mechanically. Never.

The question of handicaps was never an issue for Haitians, J tells me.

And chances are that it will be that way for some time? I can’t keep myself from smiling as I ask the question.

His answer surprises me. The 12th was a serious wake-up call for people about the issue of disabilities in this country. Suddenly, from one day to the next, a business executive, a nurse, a university professor – in short, almost everyone has found him or herself affected by disability. Before, disabled people simply lived on the margins, apart from everyone else, for a variety of reasons. Since the catastrophe, Haitians have come to realize that everyone needs to have a place, to be included here. My aunt said to me a few days ago, “You know J, for the first time I have realized that, before the earthquake, no businesses had access ramps for wheelchairs.”

But if no census has ever been taken here, where did the figures come from? The official word these days is that there are some 800,000 people with disabilities in Haiti.

This is data derived by analogy, he tells me. On the basis of such-and-such a number, we deduce another number ... it’s deduction more than scientific research based on a precise methodology.

Then he explains it to me: These figures have been used since the 1990s. During the 1980s, an international consensus was reached that approximately 10% of the world’s population was affected by some kind of disability. Therefore, in our country, our very little country, the numbers were simply aligned with those of the rest of the world. We weren’t the only country to do this; many Caribbean nations did the same thing.

During the 2003 census, the most recent conducted in Haiti, no attention was paid to disabilities; no questions were asked about disabilities among the population. At that time, the census numbered some 340,000 people with disabilities. (I repeat the number - even though no census was in fact taken of this sector of the populace.)

That’s far from 10%, you would say to me.

You are correct, J would respond

Why? You would add.

Lack of interest, would be J’s comment.

Then, while you were still gaping at him, J would explain to you: The truth is rather simple. In government and government departments - in effect, there was nothing designed for people with disabilities before now. So, the question was - though it was never openly talked about - why shine the light on a section of society that we aren’t ready to help in any case? So we used the magic number - 10% - to be like the rest of the world.

And you, J, do you believe in that figure? Personally, I would put it at closer to 13 or 14%.

He has a direct gaze and very young eyes. He makes his comments, remarkably cut-and-dried and yet frank at the same time, in a soft voice. Before letting him go off with his friend who has been waiting at a table a little way off, I ask him if he is optimistic about the future.

I am fairly pessimistic about the future of Haiti, but I am more positive about the issue of disabilities in Haiti.

Are those your final comments?

Yes, he tells me unequivocally.

Well, mine will be different. I am fairly optimistic about the future of disabilities in Haiti, and this makes me feel very positive about the future of the country as a whole, since there are people like J who are working daily on behalf of the most vulnerable.When a society starts to reflect, even if it’s only tentatively, timidly, about its most fragile and rejected members, this is a society not only ready for change; it is a society that has already begun to change.

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The end of a gray day: Statistics don’t exist and the government could tell you that the numbers are anywhere between 1 and 999,999. I told myself this while I was crossing the street - my eyes fixed on the blog waiting to be written. And I also told myself that I was returning empty-handed from my hunt for numbers that would please white people. Then a child asked me for five gourdes (Haitian currency) - dirty from head to toe, but smiling as only a Haitian child knows how to smile. Sorry, I don’t have any more ... So he goes off, empty-handed from his hunt for the white dollar. I smile, because he smiled at me. Numbers, all the numbers, all the data will never replace the truth. And the truth is that it is high time we turned our attention to people with disabilities. Whether there is one or one million, it is the importance accorded each one individually that will make the difference and not the bureaucratic “why or how,” and the “if maybe there were fewer we could,” or “minus everything else, and with a bit more”, etc. ... ....


P.S. Speaking of statistics ... Did you know that the median age of the Haitian population is 18? Estimates are that the reconstruction will take a decade, so they will be 28 years old when it ends – if it ever ends!

Ti-Françoise - L'Arche Carrefour

You have to see her, happy as a fish in water. The first musical notes have barely been struck; the first voices have just begun to be heard, and a smile has taken up residence between her chin and her nose, joining up, among other things, her ears, and parallel to her eyes the colour of candy. Out of the simplicity of purity, offered as it must be by the most lovely, smiling Françoise that I know. The most striking element of this image of Ti-Françoise (“Little” Françoise) at Mass is this gentle, calm way she has of listening to what is going on around her, at the very moment it is happening – of being in the moment.

How often each day do we live in our heads rather than in the reality of the moment? We are at Mass, and we’re thinking about work. We’re at work, and we’re thinking about our vacation. On holiday, we fear the end of the pleasure. We eat and think about the dishes, then we do the dishes and think about our next meal.

One of the gifts (I say “one” of them, for there are many) of people affected by intellectual disabilities is to lead us inexorably toward the present moment, which can be so sweet. What is more, living in the present moment is truly the heart of "joie de vivre" - the zest for life that permits us not only to appreciate life but to respond more effectively to its crises.  (Do you understand this, you big shots out there?) When we see what is in front of us, when we hear about the real needs, we react more appropriately to a catastrophe.

I believe it in the depths of my guts - people “lacking” in intelligence call out of our beings a new humanity, which helps Francoise’s heart grow the way a sunflower does in the sun, and which builds more just societies, in the North as in the South. 

Our life, like dust of the universe Lived the wrong way round in this place Where our right to life Becomes king Without which we might believe ourselves only just Greater than the just men What are we, when there is no longer a “here”?

------------------

Yes
Certainly
Sometimes good news is disguised as bad,
And
Bad news is disguised as good ...

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Road Trip

Nancy told me something with her eyes today, while I was admiring the countryside of her country, as we sat in the car that was taking us to Chantal.

“To be generous, loving, real – it isn’t about giving what we have, it’s about giving what we are.”

This was a magical road trip – Marie-Pier, Nancy, and me. The women will visit the Chantal community and its new residents. For the simple pleasure of sharing a meal, a prayer, a workbench, a snippet of the community life that we have lived, so truly and fully, for so many years, at L’Arche.

You should have seen us, with our M & Ms and our pink Tampico soft drink, flavoured with the sugar of the Antilles. Children happy as a pope in front of ultimate Truth. Hair blowing in the wind, smiles on our lips, sporting sunglasses, we hummed the chorus of the theme song of the great Creator – what joy!

Marie-Pier took the wheel - my feet, needing some air, rested comfortably on the windowsill. Sometimes, the call to live freely comes to us, so we take to the road and head off for parts unknown. The whole community was ready to welcome us with arms open wide and supper already hot ...

Because L’Arche is also voyages, celebration, smiles – life well lived, we would say!

With one voice, the dogs bark out a requiem in the open air, during which my neighbours in the tent begin to pray. My eyes are still gluey with sleep, tongue coated; deep sleep, shallow dream, but when the earth starts dancing below our bodies, adrenaline quickly brings us back to earth. Besides, a little confused, I didn’t know exactly where I was, and the anxiety of being surrounded by concrete returned to me as the desire for holidays with the return to the sun. Am I in a shelter?

Yes, we are in a shelter.

The soldiers, I mean to say, our soldiers, real, good soldiers doing humanitarian work, have come to install all that we will need to live comfortably during these next months. Protected from the rain, from insects, from the sun, from cool nights, all the friends are now co-owners of a dwelling made of white canvas, with a waterproof floor, while the assistants and neighbours, are now co-tenants of modestly priced, rented accommodation.

Canadian Forces Members Work Magic for L'Arche in Carrefour, Haiti

I think of Hubert, that gentle and polite L'Arche extern with whom I shared a night on a church bench, outside, in the cool of a night without a moon. His words echo in my head like a simple truth: “We are all in the same boat...” Then he burst out laughing! Yes, more than ever, Haitians feel their individual poverty as the common situation of each and everyone, rather than as something that divides society.

The wind comes from the south this morning; it brings us the coconut perfume of the Antilles ...

She was living in rental accommodation, alone in a room. When they had time, her sisters sometimes went to see her. It should be noted too that, in addition to living with intellectual disabilities, she was confined to a wheelchair. There was no provision made for her to get outside into the air. During the earthquake, the other residents had time to escape. They raced from their respective rooms, taking to their heels and running for their lives. She is the only person who died. Without doing it intentionally, people pushed her toward death, because when we are forced into oblivion, we are pushed toward death.

No one wanted her to die, but through the years no one had rescued her. What really frightens me about all of this is the collective forgetfulness. It is so easy to forget the most vulnerable among us, and it’s a thousand times easier in the middle of an emergency situation in which we ourselves are victims.

Haiti’s history is filled with rejection: Whites and slaves, mulattoes and blacks, rich blacks and the poor, men and women, adults and children. Where the dominant live better lives than the dominated, one quickly learns that, in order to flourish, to be raised to the rank of the “heard,” this subtle domination of others is necessary. The others, and that really means all the others, are voiceless. And as the social system doesn’t change, whether among the rich or among the poor - well then, one rejects the other, depending on their mood. At the very bottom of this extended hierarchy are those who cannot defend themselves. Those whom life required to be strong in their weakness.

The person who is intellectually “deficient” does not have the same tools to function in our society as does a so-called “normal” person (and it is often the case that the normal one are “deficient” of heart). The person with an intellectual disability will never fight against the forgetting, against this rejection of their very selves. The person who is “deficient” in intelligence forgives even before we have done them harm, and therefore does not have the intellectual will to seek recognition of his or her rights. And such a desire is in any case quickly superseded by the affective will, which seeks recognition of his or her value.

It is up to us, as human beings above all else, to give these people the place they deserve. Not a ghetto – separate and isolated - but a place well and truly anchored in our societies. This forgetting of people affected by an intellectual disability is not the only problem Haitians face. I have had the enormous privilege, through my years at L’Arche, of learning that the strength of one person, more often than not, becomes the strength of another. All it takes is that we let ourselves be touched by that other.

Here in this hot country, we have not yet started to rebuild. Every day is an emergency for those who live in Port-au-Prince. All this urgency, the demands of daily life that are so ridiculously distressing for hundreds of thousands of people, doesn’t offer much hope for our cause. They are here, somewhere, the thousands of people affected by intellectual disabilities. Still hidden, still devastated, still forgotten. But in an emergency, we think of ourselves before we think of the other.

Traffic jam, in a remote corner of the city, right near the American Embassy, on the route de Tabarrre. Barely two minutes earlier I was cool, windows down, hair blowing in the wind, tearing along a deserted road. And now, everything stops.

There are only the red lights of worn brakes; only voices, shouting. Only shadows running toward something. I don’t know what’s going on, as usual. I find that I’m sometimes slow to understand life in this beautiful country. Then, the shadow of a doubt passes before my eyes. A young man, running, four boxes on his head. In this country of rumours, of werewolves and witch doctors, I don’t usually pay too much attention to idle gossip, but ...

But then, everything.

Because of the traffic, I am moving slowly through the scene, preparing myself with every metre that passes. Here in Haiti, the urban myth is that the distribution trucks are off-loaded during the night. Which would explain perhaps the how and the why - like how and why it is that we never see concrete results, real rebuilding of Haitian society, from all this international aid....

The fact is that the shadows, now illuminated by car headlights, are transformed into young people – men and women – sweating from head to toe, muscles tensed, a smile on their lips, and not a gentle smile. They are helping themselves to the contents of four gigantic trucks that have come from the Dominican Republic. Helping themselves the way I would help myself from a buffet serving French cheese and Danish biscuits. Helping themselves without the shadow of a police officer to stop them. And sitting in the shadows amidst all this racket are GI Joes, American soldiers, armed for war, handsome in their camouflage uniforms and tied hands.

The air is cool, but I’m hot. Hot from frustration perhaps, or maybe it’s the fact that it’s 25 degrees in the shadow of the sun that has already set. What is all this posturing, this rhetoric about so-called humanitarian aid...? No controls, no restraints. There are nights when my adopted country tries really hard, one way or another, to make me crazy. But I’ve already told you this – mwen pa fou.

The problem that defies belief in this system of distribution is the same problem I saw in Gonaïves in 2008 after the hurricanes: It’s the inconsistency, the incongruity of aid. We want to help, but it’s those who are young and healthy, who are able to run, to hide, to carry two bags of rice on their shoulders, who take everything. Here, if you want something - well, you’d better not be old, or too young, or ill or have a disability, or be timid or generous. Given such a system of distribution, it is now foreign countries that are creating rejection and neglect – of Haitians by Haitians - in Haitian society. Certainly, those who are weaker can wait in lines in the noonday sun. But if the myth is that every night the trucks are emptied in this way, I now have to believe it, with the faith of a doubting St. Thomas. And because of it, every night we impress a little more deeply upon people’s minds the notion that only the strong and the “normal” have the right to aid, aid that is often re-sold in the streets to these others, to people impoverished both in relation to intelligence and to the means of sustaining life.

Is there a system in place for the most vulnerable? Is any thought given to the weakest? How can one remain stoic in the face of this incongruity? We want to help, first and foremost because it’s good - and expedient - to do so, but on the ground, in the face of the size of the urgent need and the size of the gap between the disabled and the “normal,” what can we do?

Yes, I admit it; there is something like a shadow hovering over my words tonight. It’s the shadow of doubt. Doubt that we realise just how easy it is to reject the weak. That rejection is clearly how forgetting and neglect begin. That being forgotten is the easiest way for someone to die in silence. And that this silence is accepted, without question, by other countries.

Tonight, beyond the shadow of a doubt, I saw it concretely – the difficulty and the enormous challenge of integrating or re-integrating people with disabilities, including intellectual disabilities, into Haitian society.