Before the earthquake ripped through Haiti in January, Anne Luze Denestant had never really thought about what life would be like as a disabled person in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Then on Jan. 12, the earth convulsed, bringing a wave of destruction to the capital Port-au-Prince, killing some 200,000 people, and trapping Denestant under the rubble of her home for three days.
When rescuers finally pulled her out, she had to confront the knowledge that doctors were unable to save her left arm.
“I knew that before they told me,” Denestant said.
The 26-year-old asked doctors to amputate her arm in the hope her pain would stop.
“I just decided to let it go,” she said.
Now she’s joined the swelling ranks of Haiti’s disabled, who are finding a new power and new voice in a country where they were once hidden behind closed doors.
An estimated 2,000 to 6,000 people were left with some kind of disability by the quake, which struck across all classes and social strata.
They join the 800,000 disabled people who already lived in the country before, according to figures from Handicap International.
Denestant met Beatrice Leveille, 30, who has walked with crutches since contracting polio when she was 3, at a recent workshop to empower Haiti’s disabled, organized by international charity Christian Blind Mission.
“For me, being disabled used to mean being someone who can’t do anything,” said Leveille, who now represents the Association of the Handicapped in Carrefour.
“We have made some progress but it’s going to be a long fight,” said Odnel Eleazard, a project manager for the Christian Blind Mission.
Haiti is a signatory to the 2009 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and recently passed a bill for the integration of people with handicaps.
However, calling for integrated education and greater mobility, Eleazard sees the scores of new disabilities caused by the earthquake as an opportunity for Haitians to move beyond past prejudices.
The earthquake is also an opportunity for Haitians to move beyond the culture of stigmatization that has long surrounded disability, the workshop participants said.
“In a country where 10 percent of the population is disabled, you could spend a week here and never see any,” said Josue Joseph, a spokesperson at the Secretariat for Integration. “Parents would lock up their handicapped kids at home.”
People also tended to associate disability with poverty, Joseph added, suggesting the earthquake is likely to revolutionize Haitians’ perceptions.
“Now there are amputees at all levels, in the upper class, the middle class and the working class,” he said. “January 12 proved that we are all potential handicapped.”
Eleazard’s organization has visited buildings to evaluate accessibility and is providing guidelines on how to reconstruct the leveled city, with the needs of the handicapped also being considered.
The campaign, for the moment, is limited to Port-au-Prince, because of lack of greater resources, but Eleazard said there is an enormous need to deal with the question of disability outside the capital as well.
Four months on, Denestant is adjusting to her new life, living in a crowded refugee camp.
“I can do the same things as before except for combing and washing hair,” said the woman, who used to braid hair for a living.
She hopes to continue her studies at some point.
“I’m strong, I don’t think about my arm,” Denestant said. “But living in that camp is not a life.”
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