HaitiChildren: Caring for Abandoned, Orphaned and Disabled Children in Haiti | Susie Krabacher

0:19 hi welcome back. I’m Susie Krabacher, and I have some interesting things to 0:25 share with you today. I debated on how much i should say because it’s it’s a 0:35 difficult topic so I’ve been working in Haiti for 25 years and a lot of people 0:42 who have visited me in Haiti on our twenty acre campus have asked, why do you 0:47 have so many handicapped children? and you know I’m gonna be super straight 0:54 with you. I’m gonna tell you how I came to be the caregiver of so many 1:03 children in Haiti who have mental disabilities, physical disabilities. They 1:09 are challenged, but they are truly the light of my world. We have 63 children in 1:16 Haiti who are special-needs children let me start I want to preface this by 1:22 saying that in Haiti being a special needs person having a especially a 1:30 visible handicapped handicap is it’s a very it’s an interesting subject because 1:39 it’s a Karsen Haiti and Haiti is a very religious country and in the national 1:48 religion in voodoo the physical disability is considered a curse 1:55 something that was brought upon you by maybe something you did bad or something 2:03 that we might call karma so when a child is born handicapped the natural reaction 2:09 is to think that oh my gosh I’ve been cursed I’ve done something terrible or 2:15 somebody has done something terrible by putting a curse on me and I have odd I 2:23 mean it’s not it’s not so different than what we might think when something 2:27 happens to us we’re in a car accident we lose our best friend to cancer or we 2:36 lose our job what did I do to deserve this we have that same way of thinking 2:43 we must have done something wrong I mean at least some of us have that so I think 2:48 that a lot of children are and actually I know that a lot of children are 2:54 abandoned in Haiti because of defects and it’s oftentimes difficult to place 2:59 them in an orphanage a lot of the defects are in rural villages where 3:06 people don’t know that they could actually take care of that child then 3:11 that child could be a blessing we have a program on our campus where we actually 3:17 put women on donkeys with megaphones with t-shirts that have phone numbers on 3:23 the back if you have a child that’s disabled if you give birth to a child 3:27 that’s disabled call this number there is help for you there are ways 3:33 that you can be part of a community because oftentimes in these rural 3:37 villages the women who have these children are ostracized and I’ve 3:42 particularly seen that in the villages surrounding us we’re in an area of the 3:49 country where there’s actually a place which I will not name because a lot of 3:54 these women that were helping come from this village they’ve come to us through 3:58 our program or public service announcements via the donkeys and the 4:03 megaphones yes I’ve had a baby that’s that looks different or he he doesn’t 4:09 seem to be acting like a normal baby or you know I’ve had this child for five 4:14 years and my village won’t let me live inside the village because they think 4:19 that he’s a demon or the child is a curse they come to us and there’s a 4:23 place in this village where women literally know that they can go and 4:29 dispose of the child so we’ve been getting a lot of these women coming to 4:36 us we don’t want to do that we want to be part of our community our child is 4:40 not a curse we want to take care of our children we don’t want to abandon this 4:43 child to a government institution where the 4:46 child ends up at an orphanage like you are like Haiti children with just the 4:51 name of my my facility so we have prevented hundreds of children being 4:59 abandoned because of handicaps but there are many people who don’t feel they have 5:04 any resources so I’ve seen in 25 years so many times at hospitals throughout 5:15 Haiti in particular the government hospital where I worked for 14 years 5:21 women bringing their little bundle of blankets and rags and leaving that 5:29 little bundle of blankets and rags on the steps outside the hospital and then 5:35 of course when the mother leaves we had something that we called the abandoned 5:41 baby unit inside that hospital so all of those children would be immediately 5:47 picked up and taken to the abandoned baby unit and 50% of the time if not 5:52 more the child had a handicap but I knew because the mothers so often would come 6:02 back and I would see their fingers looking over the rim of the window into 6:08 the abandoned baby unit to check on their child to see that that child was 6:13 being loved and cared for and it broke my heart because I knew those women love 6:18 their child it’s just the it’s the trauma the not knowing what to do 6:27 perhaps sometimes the lack of education to know that there is a way and there’s 6:32 a roadmap of services outside of the Haiti government system one being ours 6:39 that if your child is handicapped you can get free therapy free physical 6:45 therapy we provide actually pediatric psychiatric care as well so that a lot 6:52 of times these children would therapy where they’re not walking 6:55 and maybe they’ve been atrophied for from you know few years in childhood of 7:00 not walking or moving or being cared for properly they are now walking and these 7:06 mothers are rejoicing together in a community that they have formed monks 7:12 themselves that they kept their children and their heroes there now heroes in 7:17 their villages it’s a long hard road it doesn’t always happen and there’s a lot 7:22 of stories that were ended tragically but the reason I feel that there are so 7:30 many handicapped children in Haiti is a lack of care in the rural villages lack 7:36 of prenatal care especially usually no medical attendants during birth of a 7:43 child so you might have you know the mom the mom is giving birth with the help of 7:48 maybe her 12 year old daughter and they don’t know how to do the delivery so we 7:55 really really really are focusing on education education education 7:59 I don’t believe kids are abandoned because they’re not loved I simply don’t 8:05 see that I see that there is a fear and that there is a cultural sort of enigma 8:13 for children that that have the handicaps not to be integrated into 8:19 society so we would love to hear your thoughts about maybe you know some of 8:26 you may have handicapped children with that you’ve dealt with something not 8:30 that tragic and not that it feels very dark but I’d love to hear any of your 8:39 thoughts about how you’ve integrated special needs children or thoughts even 8:46 if you don’t have a special needs child how you think integrating the ideas into 8:52 a community that we’re all the same that we’re all precious and that we all 8:56 deserve a chance thank you so much please visit my website it’s 9:01 HaitiChildren.org 9:13