Today I went back to visit some old friends at “Cheshire Home,” a home for disabled adults that I worked with last year while I was here. Unfortunately if you’re disabled, living in a home full of other disabled people in Africa, not much changes over the span of a year.
There are a lot of pretty heartbreaking things about this place. It’s a home built specifically for the physically disabled, and everyone here is going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. What the people running the home fail to disclose is that another 6 out of 10 people living in the home also have mental disabilities that are completely ignored and even denied by the staff. On top of this, there are residents whose families live thirty minutes away but haven’t had a visitor in over 6 months. The biggest recreational excitement of the day is afternoon tea, which always has way too much milk in it (in order to keep people from burning themselves) and lasts a span of about 15 minutes. In a nutshell: I’d rather be deaf, dumb and blind living in Haiti right now then be sent to spend the rest of my life at this place.
Depressing feelings aside, coming back reminds me of some of the people I’ve missed since I left them last. Instead of going into details, I’ll offer a brief overview of my crew here:
Jonny: My bff. He’s not too much older than I am and has been disabled all of his life. He has a wandering eye that makes it difficult to tell whether he’s actually looking at you, and he likes to teach me dirty Afrikaan slang words and then sends me around to recite them back to people in the home. He claims to have a girlfriend who’s picture is the background on his phone, but I think he may have downloaded it from an info-mercial.
Florence: aka: Flossy. An older woman who used to be a young and beautiful flight attendant until she got in an accident and hasn’t been able to walk since. Her ability to speak is almost completely gone as well but mentally she is completely fine.
Ass in the Red Beanie: Basically this guy doesn’t ever actually talk to me. He’s a hermit that sits in the front of the recreation room everyday watching his tv show and drinking his tea. If he ever feels that my conversation with another resident is distracting him from his show he feels free to tell me “Shut the F**** up back there! I’m trying to watch something! (Hey, I’d be pissed too if the only microscopic amount of joy in my day was being threatened.)
Lastly, there is Andrew.
Andrew is in his early thirties and is not only completely physically disabled but is also mentally disabled and has short-term memory loss. All of this happened to him when he was 24 and he got into a car accident that completely changed his life.
Each time I walk into the room he introduces himself to me and tells me about how he plays rugby for St. Andrews (something he did do before his crash.) Five minutes into the conversation he gets to whether or not I have a boyfriend, by ten minutes in he’s professing his love to me and in fifteen I have a marriage proposal. (And this cycle repeats itself the next time I visit as he has no idea who I am each time I walk into the room) I tell him, “weren’t you in love yesterday? I don’t want to be a one day thing Andrew.” And he insists, almost as if he’s offended, “No, today is the first time”
At first glance, its hard to think of a life more depressing than Andrew’s. He basically had his entire life taken from him when he was still so young. Now he’s living in a home where family and friends rarely come to visit him and the only excitement in a day is afternoon tea, the same way everyday. He’ll never be able to walk again, he’ll probably never leave this place at all.
But there is also something extraordinary I find in his condition, something I truly envy about him. He has the chance, every single day, to fall in love for the first time all over again. Tell me what in the world could be more beautiful than that?
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