CHARLES KONG SOO

Sylvia Git­tens, from Phase 3, Beetham Gar­dens, is an un­em­ployed sin­gle moth­er of two—Je­ni­ah Fran­cis, ten, who goes to Nel­son Street Girls' RC and Kadeon Git­tens, five, from Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School.

Kadeon is a spe­cial needs child who was born with spina bi­fi­da and can­not walk. Spina bi­fi­da is a birth de­fect in which part of the spine does not form nor­mal­ly, leav­ing an open­ing in the back. As a re­sult, the spinal cord and nerves may be dam­aged.

In his brief five years of life, Kadeon has un­der­gone sev­en op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing a shunt placed in his head and has spent most of his life in a brace or a wheel­chair. This hasn’t pre­vent­ed him from liv­ing life to the fullest, hav­ing fun with his friends or dimmed his de­ter­mi­na­tion to lead a nor­mal boy’s life.

Kadeon is not treat­ed any dif­fer­ent­ly by his class­mates or teach­ers, he plays games, stud­ies and eats lunch with them, just like when he at­tend­ed Ser­vol’s Re­gion­al Train­ing and Re­sources Cen­tre (RTRC) on Pem­broke Street, Port-of-Spain, six months pri­or to at­tend­ing his new school.

Mak­ing fun­ny faces and do­ing the long-time Hol­ly­wood co­me­di­an Grou­cho Marx eye­brow wag­gle, Kadeon said "I like it at the school. I like my teacher Miss Gon­za­les and play­ing in the school­yard with my friends. I like spelling, maths, and read­ing."

His moth­er, who stays with him thor­ough­out the day, said he made new friends at the school. "I’m there with him in class if he needs to reach for some­thing like a text­book or to wash his hands. Kadeon us­es an old, un­com­fort­able pe­di­atric wheel­chair which is falling apart. All now, as he’s grow­ing, he needs a cus­tomised, rigid-frame wheel­chair de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for his body, but it costs $32,400 from the US."

The wheel­chair is to stim­u­late his spine, be­cause it is curv­ing, and to try and keep his back aligned so he will be more com­fort­able in mov­ing around.

Git­tens said she was re­search­ing the var­i­ous char­i­ta­ble groups from the US who came to T&T to do hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­lief for as­sis­tance as they some­times do­nat­ed wheel­chairs to the need­i­est cas­es.

Git­tens is al­so wait­ing for an ap­point­ment in May at the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre in Wood­brook to de­ter­mine if he is el­i­gi­ble for surgery.

She said a PTSC (Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion) El­der­ly and Dif­fer­ent­ly-Abled Mo­bile (EL­DAMO) bus trans­port­ed Kadeon to and from school, but if it didn’t come she would have to pay for a taxi.

First-year in­fants teacher Es­ther Gon­za­les said Kadeon picked up his school work quick­ly but some­times he for­got it as well. He has still man­aged to keep up with the work.

She said he was a very hard work­er and has a lot of friends in class among the 26 chil­dren who were al­ways ea­ger to as­sist him in every­thing, if is to take out a pen­cil or an eras­er.

Gon­za­les said there was dis­crim­i­na­tion in his class, he played games with the oth­er chil­dren, they would run around and play catch and one child will push him in his wheel­chair.

She said Kadeon was a lov­ing and re­spect­ful child who played kid­dies mas with Ze­bapique Pro­duc­tions.

Flood caus­es dam­age

Git­tens said she was al­so re­cov­er­ing from flood wa­ters in Au­gust 2018 when she sus­tained over $40,000 in dam­age af­ter her stove, fridge, fur­ni­ture, chil­dren's’ clothes, shoes, books, and bed were de­stroyed. She said she ob­tained a re­place­ment chair set but it was still un­wrapped as she was fear­ful of an­oth­er flood de­stroy­ing it.

Git­tens said oth­er res­i­dents were af­fect­ed by the flood, and while they were thank­ful for some re­lief ef­fort, it can­not com­pen­sate for their loss­es.

She said she faced mul­ti­ple flood­ings in that month. On the first oc­ca­sion she heard the rain falling heav­i­ly, but she was obliv­i­ous to how high the wa­ter was out­side her home. Git­tens said her moth­er who lived next door pound­ed on her front door to alert her to the dan­ger, wa­ter be­gan pour­ing in from the rear of the house and ris­ing fast. She said Kadeon was sit­ting in a chair, the wa­ter was swirling around him and he be­gan to scream, her nephew came and took him out­side.

Git­tens said on the sec­ond oc­ca­sion, she was in the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for a med­ical ap­point­ment when she got a call that her house was un­der wa­ter again. She was over­whelmed when she saw her house in­un­dat­ed. Fire of­fi­cers made a hole in the back wall of her house and a neigh­bour made a hole in the front wall to let the flood wa­ters es­cape.

Git­tens said she in­creased the brick height bar­ri­er at her front door from one to two con­crete blocks af­ter the ini­tial flood wa­ters breached her home and she was hang­ing on for the sake of her chil­dren.

Peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in help­ing Kadeon, please call 747-7191.