The first time I saw Senel was in Cayes. He was drenched in sweat, walking through streets filled with pedestrians and small motorcycles.

Blan, ba’m di dolà pou’m ka ale lòpital
Frè’m, mwen pa kònn bay ti-moun yo.

We talked. He asked me for money several times, and I refused him. My excuse, which is the truth, was that I never give to children. His intellectual disability, though slight, struck me as an odd kind of difference. How old was he; what was his life like; where did he live? These were the burning questions I had about this colourful character.

He took my arm, his own covered in sores and scabs; he spoke quickly, sweating profusely in great big drops. He needed money to go to the hospital; he needed money to buy food; he needed money for shoes. He did, in fact, need money. The scene seems so insignificant to me today, so small, so, so brief! But on that wet Tuesday morning, my eyes were opened once again to the reality of intellectual disabilities in my adoptive home.

I saw Senel again a number of times in the busy streets of Cayes. He was always there, asking for money. Finally, I asked him to take me home with him to meet his mother, and that is how my friendship with Senel and his family began.

Last weekend, I put on my reporter's hat and went to stay with Senel's family, in their home, for two-and-a-half days. My goal was to discover how eight of them managed to live in a small house, with neither parent working outside the home. I especially wanted to understand how this family lives with a child affected by an intellectual disability. As always, I hope that the photographs truly reflect the reality.

"The value of each human being is greater than the sum total of a society."

Senel and his family are poor. So what, you might say. In a country like Haiti, this is common, even banal. But you would be deceiving yourself. Poverty is not collective; it is first of all individual. Only then does it become collective.When we realize this, that change in our thinking also changes the way we look at collective poverty. We no longer see it as too big, as bigger than ourselves; we see it in the lives of isolated individuals, who try somehow or other, to emerge from it. So the generalized compassion we might have originally felt for a society at large we now must feel for the individual in front of us. To see something writ small is also to see it writ large - and the story of the condition of people living with a disability is also - and perhaps even more so in our time - a story of money. Or rather, a story of the trivializing of the individual in the face of the whole of a society. And we trivialize their situation when we try to explain it as a stroke of genetic misfortune, or as a a blow inflicted by the sadness of poverty.

Senel has never been to school; he does not have the capacity to do so - at least not to a so-called "normal" school. And the lack of specialized schools in the region (as in the country as a whole) means that children like Senel stay at home, or find such ways as they can to help their families.

My friend is 18 years old. He looks 14 on these rain-soaked days, 13 on the bright, sunny days that make him squint. Money is the word that is his constant companion. Sometimes a friend of his who is a mason gives him a bit of work, such as fetching water to make cement or carrying mortar to a worksite; sometimes he walks the streets of the city, looking for money. In the city that is somewhat his own, he knows the alleys and slums better than many and he zigzags through them, happy, lively. After all, who would want to walk through all the dark corners of the city unless he had to? A small creature, gifted with sensitivity and curiousity. Yes, Senel knows the city better than others do, maybe even better than the mayor does - who knows?

I said that money rules his life. What I mean is that we are always looking for that which we lack most. Love, power, wealth, wisdom ... Senel's parents, his brothers, his sisters, they are all conscious of their own poverty. Or, as their father, Bertonie, puts it, of their place in life. They talk about it with embarrassment, without pride or shame. It is a tolerable situation, since we still have energy in the evenings to take the broom and chase out the cockroaches from the floor. It is worse here than it is elsewhere. So we dream of elsewhere in order to forget what is here. When we close the doors of the four-room house, as the sun sets; voices rise in the light of a white candle. We speak of the family, the lottery, football, money. Especially money. What we would like to buy, what we bought, what we couldn't buy, what we will buy one day.
On Saturday morning, Rosemene, Senel's mother, told me that they have almost no debts. A meagre consolation this "almost," considering that the two aging parents have no work. He, for more than 24 years, wheeled his gigantic wheelbarrow, made of wood and two car tires, along the sidewalks of the city. Several years ago, he was involved in an accident. A reckless driver hit him from behind and pushed him into a ravine outside the city, while he was transporting a steel barrier forged for a prominent person living there. The consequences? A fractured left arm, dislocation of the left shoulder, crushed vertebral disk, dislocation of several vertebrae. In short, for a man with no education, who made a living from the sweat of his brow and his muscles, it was the end: he had to stop working. The wooden wheelbarrow still sits in front of the house, forlorn, like a dead body withering a little more each day.

Sometimes, when there is money, Rosemene runs a small business selling coal. But it's never enough to support them on an ongoing basis. She too has had no education; she decided last year to take some adult education courses. They are offered, for free, here and there in the larger cities of the country.

She finally started her courses in April 2010. Her weak eyes, in need of glasses that cost about 2000 gourdes (about $55 Canadian), tear up when she talks about the progress she has made. She is lovely, in her fifties, smiling - a strong presence, and just as strong in her absence.

Poukisa ou deside ale lekol?
Mwen ta renmen kapab sinyen!

She wanted to be able to sign her name - that's why she wanted to take courses. The pride of an individual, in a collectivity.

One night, Senel, his younger brother Mikelson, and their cousin Peterson took me to the neighbourhood beach. Senel's intellectual disability allows him - free of self-consciousness - to wiggle his hips and sway to the music when he walks by the disco. His intellectual disability, his openness of heart (an explosive mix of love and curiousity, of difference and indifference) pushes him to greet as many people as he can, even if - more often than not - they make fun of him. Mikelson, on the other hand, is not living with an intellectual disability. Instead, what affects him is adolescence, that stage of evolution when everything is about ME (to be sure, some people never emerge from this phase of evolution!), and he understands what it means to always think about how one looks to others.

The individual against society

The small difference in age - 18 versus 16 - between the two brothers plays a large role in how they act toward one another. Interviewing them, alone on the beach, under the setting sun perfumed by the odour of garbage, Mikelson tells me about what makes him angriest about his brother - it's his inability to recognize that people are laughing at him. Between the lines, under the tones of the creole accent, I perceive his real love for his brother who is "not norma.l" But above all, I feel all the violence of the gaze of others in Mikelson's personality. He wants to please them, but at the same time finds them superficial. He also recognizes that his brother goes too far when he throws rocks at those who tease him in the street. And as is the role of the younger brother (I know, I am one!), he doesn't hesitate, at home, to tease his brother who has such a hot temperament. Senel gets angry faster than his shadow, says his sister Maudelaine! But he never stays angry. Especially if someone offers him food as a way of asking for forgiveness!

I rub my hand across my forehead; it's barely 7:30 in the evening and yet we are all getting ready to go to bed. My hand comes back covered with salt water. It is so hot in these little cement and sheet metal houses. In fact, after only about an hour lying on-my-back-because-each-movement-makes-me-hotter, I can feel the sweat pouring from my pores. Salty-sweet. the rainy season is also the season of sticky heat and early rising. Tomorrow, I will enjoy a cold shower, behind the toilet (some would call it an outhouse).

Senel and I are going to church tomorrow morning. There where he will introduce me - it seems to me - to the whole city. The songs harmonize tenderly with half-closed eyes of my friend. God, for a moment, replaces money.

After the celebration, Senel keeps me waiting several minutes. The pastor always gives him some money from the collection ...

My weekend included much more. I'm probably forgetting the most important things. But for today, these are the essentials. You now have the backdrop on which to place these images of the life of Senel and his family.