Colorful bolts of fabric vied with the whir of multiple sewing machines for our attention as we stepped out of the heat and dust and into the small blue building. As I tried to take in the sights and sounds of busy hands, pouncing needles, and soft chatter, a beautiful young woman named Guerline swiveled her chair around. Guerline had never seen one, and her excitement was palpable. We could understand why: this beautiful young seamstress stitches colorful bags and wallets with just one arm. She lost the other one in the Haiti earthquake. We joined her in the dream of keeping her someday-baby close while being able to continue working, all of us recognizing that her job is a luxury and blessing in poverty-stricken Haiti—especially for someone who is disabled. Guerline is one of 25 employees at Three Cords Haiti , a successful small business on the campus of Mission of Hope Haiti MOH , a large nonprofit organization that provides food, housing, faith strengthening, education, and job training to a large region of the country. The employees at Three Cords are disabled and at-risk women who have risen above their circumstances of missing limbs, deafness, and extreme poverty. They joyfully produce colorful and expertly sewn fabric purses, totes, wallets, pocket T-shirts, and hair accessories. The items are sold online, through trunk shows, by some North American retailers, and in the Mission of Hope on-campus store, where they are scooped up by the more than 5, North Americans who do mission trips there each year. The profits from Three Cords fund a prosthetics lab on campus, which was responsible for fitting thousands of Haitians with arms, legs, and feet in the aftermath of the earthquake. Now, the prosthetics center keeps those patients—many of them children—in properly sized feet and legs as they grow and age. Three Cords was started as a result of the earthquake.
https://assets.vogue.com/photos/5b931fbd3ca10702c0cddd47/master/w_2560,c_limit/00-story-chromat-mama-cax.jpgEarthquake’s Burdens Weigh Heavily on Haiti’s Elderly
It set up a makeshift surgery center and hospital to tend to the many people injured in the quake. A missionary who came to help decided to teach the women waiting for surgery, and in recovery afterward, how to braid fabric into woven headbands. Knowing those women would need opportunities to grow and work, the idea behind Three Cords was formed. In September , Three Cords was launched and quickly expanded to hire from a nearby deaf community. Today, most of the artisans on staff are women with a disability, and Mission of Hope continues to look for ways to provide employment opportunities for the disabled as it pursues its vision to bring life transformation to every man, woman, and child in Haiti. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Guerline grew up in Port-au-Prince with a large family of seven brothers and seven sisters.
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She lost her arm during the earthquake when a wall fell upon her. Life was extremely difficult for her afterward, as she was forced to relearn basic tasks such as buttoning her shirt or doing her hair. In addition, amputee victims are often viewed as outcasts in Haitian culture, so lacking her arm led to much ridicule from others. Guerline came to Three Cords in when she heard of the work opportunity provided to those who are disabled. Although she could not use a sewing machine to sew products like the others, she taught herself how to hand-stitch outer edges of Three Cords wallets using her good arm to stabilize the product and her teeth to pull the stiches through. She also uses this method to make Christmas ornaments. The MOH prosthetics lab only specializes in lower limbs, and the last time I saw Guerline, she was joyfully working at her desk with her one arm. But shortly after that, an American prosthetist who came to volunteer in the lab made a mold of her arm and took it with him back to New York. He returned a few months later with a new prosthetic arm for Guerline; she was overjoyed and remains that way every day. Among the other employees are four who have been with Three Cords from the very beginning and five young women who have grown up in the MOH orphanage, called Village of Hope. Here are a few stories of some of the other Three Cords employees, women who have exhibited ongoing courage and strength in the face of great personal tragedy:. Gernise has been with Three Cords since the beginning.
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She grew up in a suburb of Port-au-Prince, graduated high school, and went on to study nursing at a university in the city. When the earthquake hit, Gernise was attending class. With the force of the trembling, the walls of her school collapsed on her and she was stuck under the rubble, calling for help throughout the night. By the grace of God, Gernise was found alive and rescued the next day. Although she survived, her leg was severely injured and amputated. Soun-Love grew up in Port-au-Prince in a large family of 12 with nine siblings and her parents. At 14, she began working as an artisan at a company called Gadesa IndepCo. There, she hand-beaded dresses and bags as well as created paintings. When the earthquake hit, Soun-Love was on the second story of her house in Port-au-Prince. As the ground split, her home split beneath her as well, and she fell through the crevice of the second story floor. Soun-Love says she remembers reaching up with her hand, but no one was there to help her. While hospitalized, she met a woman from Israel who took her there to get a prosthetic leg. When she returned, she began working at Three Cords. She is a quiet soul who loves working with other people who have experienced the same struggles and are able to understand her pain. Soun-Love now lives in a nearby village with her husband and her two small children.Sophonie is one of Three Cords new deaf employees. She lives in the village of Leveque, where there are deaf families. Sophonie attended a sewing class in Port-au-Prince that gave her a basic knowledge of sewing before she came to work for MOH. She just graduated from the Haiti Deaf Academy in January. She was married last July to a deaf pastor who works for Mission of Hope, and they are expecting their first child, a little girl, in May. Stephania works at Three Cords in the morning and attends high school in the afternoon. When she graduates, she wants to attend medical school. Stephania knows some English, so she also serves as a faithful and patient Creole teacher to Courtney Johnson, a young woman from Iowa who lives at Mission of Hope and oversees the work at Three Cords and the running of the market. We speak a different language with our mouths, but I hope they see in my eyes the respect I have for their courage and perseverance. They know and love my daughter and my grandson, so I get hugs from many of them just for being their mama and nana, and I treasure those. I cannot fathom the agony of the earthquake, the losses of limbs and family and friends that they endured. To have moved beyond that to develop a career and earn a paycheck is truly remarkable given the hardships of high unemployment and discrimination they face in Haiti. They are kind, humble and inspirational women who display grit and grace in great measure. Anyone interested in learning more about Three Cords or purchasing items online, can visit www. Anyone interested in visiting Mission of Hope can learn more at www. About The Author. Zoe Podcast. Scroll to Top. Encouraging articles, podcasts and newsletters arrive in your inbox written by women just like you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Amputee Devotee
Why should you join the Amputee Coalition? By regi stering with the Amputee Coalition, you receive exclusive member benefits. You g ain access to connect with other people living with limb loss or limb difference , a long with resources and activities designed with you in mind! You will receive our communications to stay up to date with the latest information. You will also have an opportunity to make your voice heard on critical issues impacting limb loss and limb difference. Become a part of our community today! Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Prosthetic User Cane Crutches Scooter Stubbies Wheelchair Walker None Other Select all that apply Personal contact information collected from users of the Amputee Coalition web site and its services will not be sold or otherwise provided to organizations or commercial activities. Click here to view Amputee Coalition's Privacy Policy. This site uses cookies to provide a better user experience and analyze traffic. By continuing to use our website, you consent to our use of cookies. First Name. Last Name.
Mobile Phone. State US Please select Country Please select Year of Birth Please select Gender Please select Female Male I prefer not to say. Year of Initial Amputation. Do you use any of these devices regularly? Personal contact information collected from users of the Amputee Coalition web site and its services will not be sold or otherwise provided to organizations or commercial activities. American Indian. Pacific Islander. Partial Foot - Left. Below Knee - Left. Above Knee - Left. Hip - Left. Partial Hand - Left.
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Below Elbow - Left. Above Elbow - Left. Shoulder - Left. Partial Foot - Right. Below Knee - Right. Above Knee - Right. Hip - Right. Partial Hand - Right. Below Elbow - Right. Above Elbow - Right.Shoulder - Right. Disease Related. Type 1 Diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes. Prosthetic User. Team Zaryen was established in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake to give those injured a chance to play sport again. The Team Zaryen Amputee Soccer Team, founded by Cedieu Fortilus, was created after the earthquake when hundreds in Haiti needed to have limbs amputated due to severe crushing injuries and wounds that would not heal. Zaryen, the Creole word for Tarantula, is a spider known to carry on despite the loss of a limb. This appropriate name describes the passion of the team and their vision to expand its mission beyond soccer by sending a message of hope to all who have an impairment that they can carry on and be successful. Team Zaryen currently consists of 35 men, women and children with arm and leg amputations. This past summer, Team Zaryen started a wheelchair basketball team for those with spinal cord injuries, amputations and other impairments. They continue to struggle with difficulties with transportation, a place to practice as well as not having appropriate wheelchairs for sports. Despite the limitations, these sports programmes give them a sense of belonging and an opportunity to be successful. Their goal is to be able to participate in international events and raise awareness for the continued local needs in Haiti. Team members are being trained to make sandals as well as canes, crutches and walkers out of PVC pipe. The assistive devices will be issued at medical clinics and orphanages throughout Haiti.
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These initiatives enable people to work, give back to their communities and demonstrate success to others with impairments. They have a long term goal to open a wheelchair provision and assembly centre in Haiti. Despite the barriers, participants never lose hope and continue to move forward towards their goals. From 30 March until 13 April, stories will be posted on Paralympic. Like or follow them to keep up to date with the latest news on the development of para-sport. Skip to main content. Related Topics America. Related Stories Imagen. Search for ChangeMakers is on. Colonel Jennifer Menetrez sympathized with the man on the hospital bed. She knew his status: lower spinal cord injury. Lower leg amputation. This man would never walk again. At least, that was what he had been told by caretakers, shortly after a 7. Menetrez, however, believed in this man. She knew he might someday walk, if only someone took the time to work with him. A few beds down from the nameless man was a nameless woman: pregnant, paralyzed, and unable to speak.Outside her room sat a man-made wheelchair with a dirty, plastic lawn chair attached as seating. Menetrez had been deployed to Haiti to lead the combined US military medical response. The ship saw surgical cases during immediate Haiti relief efforts. The estimated total of amputees resulting from the Haitian earthquake is generally accepted at 4,, but Menetrez says approximately 1, amputees were surgically treated after the earthquake, 37 of whom were on the USNS Comfort. Whatever the true numbers of those afflicted, post-earthquake conditions in Haiti remain less than ideal. The already-low life expectancy of Haitians has been compounded by sanitation problems resulting from the earthquake and associated injuries. Amputees face the nearly impossible task of keeping their wounds sterile, although Haitians continue to take great pride in cleanliness and presentation. Throughout Haiti, the emergence of tent cities formally known as Internally Displaced Persons Camps fostered additional health complications. Amputees struggled to use their prostheses while traversing rough terrain and, without the benefit of running water, trying to keep their skin clean and healthy. For those people still facing rehabilitation, hope often seems slim. A primary rehabilitation center near Port-auPrince is only accessible via dirt stairs that run up one hillside and down another. Amputees gather near hospitals in the hopes of being treated. For those with prosthetic limbs, there is no time for, or inclination toward, therapy. Patients begin using their new legs from the moment they try them on.
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Living in Haiti with a disability is often seen as a curse— a sign that a family did something worthy of punishment. Voodoo is very much still alive in the small country, and people with disabilities have no rights and grim futures. Structural adaptations are virtually non-existent. On a global scale, these challenges are not uncommon. And yet, some measure of hope remains. This November, Menetrez delivered the keynote speech at Neuroprosthetics , an international conference on artificial limb development at Worchester Polytechnic Institute. As of October, BAMC has treated a total of 1, amputees, 20 percent of whom had upper-limb amputations. Another 20 percent had multiple amputations. The Center for the Intrepid is a four-story, 65, squarefoot facility built from donations from more than , people. It showcases an impressive team effort by a multitude of specialty departments including, but not limited to, physical medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, burn therapy, prosthetics, and case management. Research and clinical departments at BAMC are housed within the same building, a rarity among many large hospitals, and provide a powerful bridge between design and practice. Veterans are led on full horseback riding excursions through the countryside, participate in sled hockey, and make full use of the Flowrider: a recreational water device that simulates wakeboarding and surfing. As part of occupational rehabilitation, BAMC engages veterans in a firearm training simulator that re-establishes their comfort with weaponry. But Menetrez notes that even this activity presents a range of challenges. Daily activities are really important aspects of rehab. Through participation in the Gait Lab, which utilizes 26 cameras and eight force plates, veterans can traverse an uneven surface through which an instrumented treadmill allows them to improve ambulatory performance. But for a number of veterans, social engagement might provide the most useful therapy of all. In the BAMC computer lab, injured veterans can reconnect with their units and swap experiences and memories.Meanwhile, their units are worried about what happened to them. Despite the success of BAMC therapies and technologies, Menetrez is quick to warn that the challenge of recovery ultimately falls on the medical provider. Even amidst its slew of fancy machines, facilities and state-of-theart prosthetics, the key to the success of BAMC remains its ability to place focus on the patient. And thousands of miles away, in the unsanitary environment of Haiti—its rigged equipment, dirty hospitals, and overcrowded wards—the same truth holds. We can never lose sight of the patient. Circa January, Alfred Molina Issue. Share on Facebook. Share on Messenger. Share on Linkedin. Share on Reddit.
Three Cords Haiti: Life Transformation For At-Risk Women
Share on Email. Related Articles:. Amy Purdy — Medal Winning Paralympian. Kurt Yaeger — Sons of Anarchy. Acupuncture — Ancient Chinese Secret, Revealed! Love Simple — Lights! Post: Unread post Wheeliewoman 04 Feb , Post: Unread post KH 29 Feb , Post: Unread post pjer 29 Feb , Post: Unread post skippiebg 29 Feb , Post: Unread post KH 02 Mar , Post: Unread post Romka 02 Mar , Post: Unread post willlincoln54 15 May , Post: Unread post Romka 15 May , Post: Unread post farfalla 10 Apr , Post: Unread post Sstumpy 21 Apr , Amputee Devotee International forum amputee life, dating, prosthetics Skip to content. Quick links. Forum rules Communication only in English!!! Messages in other languages will be deleted!!! Messages: 22 1 2 3 Next. First Amputee Dates Post: Unread post Wheeliewoman 04 Feb , Would love to hear about some of devotees first dates with amputees. It was a chance meeting in a pub, I was talking to a lady who turned out to be her daughter. All I heard was "you have no chance with her, she's a Lesbian". I went to talk to the lady who shouted out sat behind the table and never thought anymore about it. It was only later when she wanted to pop out and her daughter brought the wheel chair over, did I realise she had no legs, both had been amputated high above the knee. I was slightly taken aback but also realised legs or No legs I really did love this woman. We were together for 6 years total and married for 3 of those.
Salt Lake prosthetist helps Haitians with arms, hands and hope
We did more as a couple than most do in a lifetime. Nothing was ever uncomfortable and we just got on with it. Everything was incredible. It also released my hidden Dev, I would like nothing more than to meet another leg amputee but realise I can't be lucky twice. Re: First Amputee Dates Post: Unread post skippiebg 29 Feb , Well, the whole idea of a first date is rather redolent of romantic novelettes and high school crushes. I've had first dates, but with fully limbed girls and women and never with a one-legged girl or woman. With amputees and devotees, it's more like hunting or having a sudden stroke of luck, to be grasped or regretted forever more. I chanced upon and approached one lady in a shopping centre in the London satellite town of Croydon, having spotted her years and years earlier on a bus in the southern London suburb of Streatham and kicked myself for not having approached her then. The bus sighting was perhaps in , the meeting in '88 and we met quite a few times, the last in ish. Another lady I met at the now long-closed artificial limb centre in the London suburb of Roehampton. The meeting would have been a proper date, except that it was actually a cool commercial transaction. It was organised by a friend now long dead who wanted me to meet the lady with her full consent and interest. The venue was her suggestion and she introduced me to the prosthetist as her chaperone, resulting in my being allowed to see her intimate parts. Quite memorable for a first "date"!This was in late and we kept on meeting on a regular and yes, commercial! I've had just one more encounter, and that wasn't a date, either. It was a meeting at a Fascination conference. It appeared for odd years in the s and 90s and ran annual get-togethers called conferences. Anyway, at the conference I was lucky to socialise with a very pretty Puertorican Newyorker exactly my age, and we had a whale of a time, promising each other a series of repeats. As often happens, the promise never materialised and we've now long lost touch. This wasn't a romantic episode, however, but another cool commercial transaction, though we did genuinely like each other -- definitely in a physical and possibly in a social way. The nearest I came to a purely romantic involvement with an amputeee lady was through the Outsiders' Club, a British dating and socialising group for people with disabilities. The club met monthly in pubs in London and had regional groups which met in pubs elsewhere around Britain. Meetings were usually attended by a dozen or so people, with those before Christmas attracting up to two or even three dozen. Anyway, we had a whale of an evening and agreed to meet again in her part of West London. Sadly, though, that was it!
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