ARTICLE - SCHOOL HELPS BLIND OVERCOME STIGMA

HAITIAN SCHOOL HELPS BLIND OVERCOME STIGMA
(Thespectrum.com) - By Samantha Clemens

LES CAYES, Haiti -- Pierre Ronald Francois was doing well as a student in his ninth year of school in Haiti. But when his parents were unable to afford the treatment for the pain in his eyes, he slowly watched the world grow dark and became blind over the course of a year.

Ten years later, he is a beginning student at The Special School of Les Cayes, Braille and other techniques that will allow him to pick up where the 22-year-old left off.

The Societe Haitienne Daide Aux Aveugles, which loosely translates into the Haitian Society for those with visual impairment, created a school in south Haiti to allow for people with disabilities – specifically the blind – to receive an education.

“There’s a lot of kids with blindness, poor kids who are blind in the area, that need an education,” Director Margalie Olivier Duplaissy said through a translator.

Since its inception in 2007, the small school has grown to 18 students who are blind or visually impaired and an additional 36 students with no disabilities.

In an effort to combat a social stigma about people with disabilities, the school uses inclusion to incorporate any student with a willingness to learn.

“School is for everybody,” Duplaissy said. “To have value (in school), you need to put kids who have a disability with kids who don’t so they can learn to be in society and society can accept them.”

Teacher Seme Jean recognizes how special the school is for Haiti.

“Not a lot of departments have a school like this,” Jean said through a translator.

Jean is a former student of St. Vincent’s School for Handicapped Children in Port-au-Prince, the largest school for people with disabilities in Haiti. Jean is the only one of the four classroom teachers who is blind.

“It’s much easier for me to explain something because that’s the way I am,” Jean said. “I’m living it.”

Jean circles the small classroom of five students – whose ages range from 6 to 24. It is the first room where students who come to the school are sent. It is for people learning how to be blind.
Rosier Emires, 24, moves her hands from a piece of paper with Braille to a typewriter.

She is translating geography in Braille to French for someone with sight.

“Les vallees sont generalement fertiles,” she types, learning that the valleys are generally fertile.
Sharing a desk with Emires is Francois. He is also translating Braille, placing his hands on the typewriter to learn the letters’ positions. For Francois, paying the motorcycle taxis to get to school every day is worth the effort as long as he has the money.

“In life, if you don’t have anything in your mind, you cannot live,” Francois said in English.