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.

The daughter, sitting a little behind her worried mother, laid her jaw on her mother’s shoulder. I suddenly saw that their skin, sticky in the hot air (the ceiling fans are never really able to cool it), bonded in a lovely way. Braided hair, silver earrings set in delicate ears - all of this added to the beauty of the scene. Softly, softly, the daughter whispered words of love into her mother’s ear. I know this; I saw it in her mother’s tender gaze.

Then, her head resting completely on her lovely mother’s shoulder, the daughter closed her eyes. In a voice gentle as honey in warm milk, the younger woman intoned a prayer to which the mother, eyes filled with tears, replied as if reflexively. To lose a foot is not the end of the world, but grief is still grief when the future is uncertain.

Suddenly, the daughter’s left arm encircled the hunched shoulders of the older woman. At this moment, it was clear they were mother and daughter – you could see it in the way they moved their fingers. Like pianists bereft of their musical notes. The fingers of the younger caressing the nape of the older woman’s neck. “It’s reassuring,” I remember saying to them, “to see such beauty …”

It was time for us - me and the daughter - to leave. The doctor arrived, just like the tears in her eyes …

Good luck, to all those who wake up one morning and must re-learn how to move in and with a body that is different.