All things considered, this is what life is like for someone who is handicapped, in a country of rising unemployment and a setting sun: Subjected to refusal after refusal on the pretext that he is incapable of working, it finally happens, and then no one talks about his disability any more at all!

Bruno, what surprises you most about Jean Gérald?

Hi Hi … Bruno has the greatest laugh I’ve heard in a long time. Jean Gérald is the most open person I know! He always wants to talk to everybody, to ask questions, to welcome people at the door with a smile. … Sometimes, when strangers come, I scowl and say we don’t have time to see them; they should come back another day. But Jean Gérald - he asks them how they are. How their families are doing; whether they are sleeping under a tent. ... It’s crazy to see that a person with disabilities is more sympathetic to strangers than I am, when I’m supposed to welcome people! Hi hi! …

Bruno is a very simple man, the guard at the gate, who let Jean Gérald onto the grounds of the AVSI (an international humanitarian aid organization) to ask for a job. In a way, he is the instigator of the good news included in this blog.

Now, I’m a little like Jean Gérald’s big brother. We talk, we give each other advice, we laugh, and we work together. I didn’t know anyone with disabilities before I met him. Hi hi … He serves up his wonderful laugh again, a laugh that lights up the interview.

In this brief article, I won’t go on at great length about the importance of work in people’s lives. You all probably know better than I do how important it is. But to know that my good friend Jean Gérald no longer worries about doing nothing with his days is one of those small joys I savour. I met Jean Gérald, who is 25, on December 3rd last year.

On the occasion of the International Day for Persons with Disabilities, the Secretariat of State for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities (SEIPH) had organized an open house for different organizations working in this field in Haiti. I was there with L'Arche, to sell products produced in our workshops and to show the display of photographs that made the rounds of communities in Quebec and Haiti.

Are you the photographer?

Yes, and hello there, I said. Turning around to see the person who had been speaking to my back, I found myself looking at the worried smile of Jean Gérald. Handsome, with a muscular, long neck, eyes full of curiosity and a direct gaze, he was standing about half a metre away from me. Your pictures are beautiful, but people are smiling too much. Life isn’t as easy as that for me, you know. He said all of these words – thoughtful, speaking of his own experience and particular reality – in French, impeccable French. Jean Gérald completed a classical education; he even studied philosophy, I learned a little later. But, as with most of the young people of his age (and there are many – remember that the median age in the country is 18 …), a bench at school was rapidly replaced by a park bench, or by the front steps of a house. Sitting is what one does here, when there is nothing to do almost every day. I am looking for work. Do you know anyone who might hire me? Those were his first words when we met on December 3rd.

He had been looking a long time, well before January 12. Sometimes, the clouds of catastrophes have silver linings that can be found if you look hard enough. My friend had knocked on quite a few doors before finding one that opened. Bruno summarizes it best:

When I started to work with Jean Gérald, I believed that I would have to handle him carefully, not let him be manipulated, that he would be limited – hi hi (hmmm, again that laugh!) – I quickly learned otherwise!

Clearly, not everyone affected by a form of disability (Jean Gérald has cerebral palsy, the result of typhoid contracted when he was three) has the same physical abilities, but it is equally clear that most of the time, all the disabled are put in the same box. Whatever the handicap, the truth is that we must sometimes be patient with the person who has one, when this person takes on his or her first job.

I am curious to see, in the coming years, how the job market (already very restricted) opens up for people with disabilities. Will we treat the newly physically handicapped, those who have lost limbs, in the same way we treat their colleagues without handicaps? Will salaries vary according to the task accomplished? Will there be more room for sensorial handicaps, for the blind, the deaf, the mute? Will we think to create workshops for people living with intellectual disabilities? In Haiti, we still talk, albeit timidly, of the reconstruction of the country. Hope, cynicism, individual realities, the desire for power – just what is this rebuilding going to look like?

People should give us more opportunities, Jean Gérald told me at the end of the interview. This is a good opportunity for us (people with disabilities) to demonstrate our ability to adapt and our desire to be something other than beggars. Me, I have much to learn at work, and I am proud of that.

And Bruno adds:

Practically speaking, it takes money to build a life, to dream, to reinvent life every day, to see it blossom. It takes money – to drink, to eat, to buy jeans, to send my kids to school. To do these things, I need money. I don’t see that the needs of the handicapped are any different.