Cultural Perspectives

This is my daughter Ecrissa. We have not had formal testing, but through various informal testing, it is presumed that she is deaf. She does not respond to any noises, is not verbal and shows no signs of hearing even loud gun shots or thunder. She is doing great though. She is learning sign language and is using some signs independently without prompting. I took her with me to The Baptist Haiti Mission the other day. This is a large mission group here in Haiti, but we were on the street looking at the street vendors merchandise, when this Haitian man came up to me and Ecrissa and started talking to Ecrissa. He was telling her that she was cute and asking her name. After a couple of attempts and no responses from Ecrissa, I told the man that she her name is Ecrissa, that she is deaf and was unable to answer his question. He immediately took 3 steps back with a look of horror on his face. "OH" he said, "she is sick". "No", I replied, "she is not sick, she just cannot hear you." His response was continued fear, stating "no, no, no, she is sick" as he walked away and went to the other side of the street.

This is unfortunately a very common scene in this country. This culture is very voodoo driven and they believe that people with disabilities are cursed with a bad spirit or that the spirit will come out and curse the person standing nearby. They believe that this child or the child's family has done something horrible and that they are being punished for something, or that a witch doctor has placed a curse on this child or family. This can be disaterous to a family. Imagine, living in a small village, where each family trades foods, goods, and/or services. And all of a sudden, you give birth to a child with a disability. This can mean that the entire village start to chastise and pull themselves away from your family. How would you get food? Who would you trade with? How would you support your family? So, many of the children with disabilities here in Haiti are literally thrown away to die. Families are afraid of them, won't touch them, and refuse to care for them, for they are "obviously possessed and bad". They hide them so that no one knows that this person is part of their family, in order to preserve the rest of the family. It is a sad sad fact of this country and these innocent children suffer greatly.

I have known this about this country and I have seen children who have been given away or left to die, I had just never had it said so bluntly and so fearfully about my beautiful daughter. It was such a wake up call to me. I just can't believe that someone could think that this beautiful little girl is inherently "bad, cursed, or has the devil in her" simply because she cannot hear. I am thankful that she is in my family.