Marie Edentguillaume took a much-anticipated vacation in late 2009. An ardent traveler, she came to the United States from Haiti and spent two weeks touring.
A week after her trip was over, she was home in Port-au-Prince, waiting for her children to return from school. As they came in the door, she reached out her arms to embrace them — just as the ceiling of the house collapsed. Her family members — except for a nephew — died in the calamitous earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010, and killed more than 100,000 people.
Edentguillaume, 60, was one of the “lucky” ones. She was flown back to the U.S. under a medical evacuation program, received treatment and eventually was resettled in a Stone Mountain apartment with three other Haitians also injured by the earthquake.
But the mercy that brought them here has run out. The seven years of disability benefits allowed is due to end, taking with it their Medicaid. And their medical conditions make employment highly unlikely.
A friend who helps them wonders why they were transported here to be left in limbo — or on the street — after seven years.
“What do we do?” asked Carole Simon, who came to know them in 2010 as an employee of the resettlement agency New American Pathways. Today, she helps them as a friend. The agency now has no official relationship with the evacuees, but Simon visits, tries to coordinate medical care and worries about them.
Pamela Wilson, spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for Georgia, said it is up to the Social Security Administration to address the Haitians’ situation. Patti Patterson, regional communications director in Atlanta for the Social Security Administration, said her agency is willing to discuss it.
Before the earthquake, Edentguillaume worked for the Haiti Ministry of Education. She taught middle school-age children, preparing them for ecole secondaire, the secondary school level in Haiti modeled on the education system in France.
When visited recently, she was lying in bed in the apartment, recovering from a broken hip. Her figure was small under the covers, her gray hair neatly pulled up on the top of her head.
Although she seemed overcome by fatigue and pain, she smiled when she was reminded of her former life as a teacher, guiding and shaping lively 12-year-olds for the future.
However, memories of her former students come with a price. It is too hard for her to revisit the past because it means acknowledging the losses.
Some days, she asks how her own children are doing.
“I’m lost, I’m lost,” she said.
The apartment complex she lives in, with three-story clapboard buildings surrounded by tall pines, seems a peaceful place.
In the living room, Loufille Cadet, Marie Mona Aristend and Nicolas Laboureur sat in wheelchairs. The three did not know one another in Haiti, but they are each others’ support now. Their combined disability income helps pay for the apartment and for a home health aide part of the day. Despite their limited mobility, they have no health aide at night.
“They cannot do without each other,” Simon said.
With strained faces, they recalled the earthquake at 4:55 p.m. on a Tuesday.
Laboureur, now 61, had just returned to his house in Port-au-Prince from a church service. He was a skilled tailor and leather worker who made shoes, belts and other items. He lost his wife and children.
Cadet, 57, also was a school teacher.
Aristend, 48, was a skilled cook. One of the popular items she made and sold was a sweet snack made with peanut butter. She also sold prepared food items to the tourist hotel El Rancho in the Petionville section of Port-au-Prince.
All have continuing medical problems. Laboureur recently fell and had to stop going to an adult day program.
Cadet cannot sit up for long without pain.
“What hurts me the most,” Laboureur said through a Creole interpreter, “is that I used to work. I’m unable to work now.
“We used to be on our feet all day then and we can’t now,” he said.
In the days after the earthquake, in the scramble to provide aid and find survivors, 48 critically injured people were flown from Haiti to Atlanta, accompanied by 21 family members, said Paedia Mixon, CEO of New American Pathways.
“It was done very quickly,” Mixon said. “Initially, there was not a lot of thought about what would happen when people were discharged.”
The evacuees were assisted by Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta, which later became New American Pathways.
They were given one year of humanitarian parole, which was changed to temporary protected status, Mixon said. That status provides no pathway to citizenship.
Of the injured people brought to Atlanta, three died, three returned to Haiti and five moved to another state, according to New American Pathways.
“We were very successful in helping many of the Haitians find work,” Mixon said.
But the story is different for the four survivors living together in Stone Mountain. Since they are not citizens, their disability benefits and access to Medicaid end after seven years.
“There isn’t a way they can go home (to Haiti) and be sustained,” Mixon said. “They don’t have an option.”
“They would probably die” if benefits are cut, she said.
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