Diagnosed with rheumatic fever at the age of three, Tiffany Ward lost mobility in her legs when she was just fifteen, forcing her to leave school in the fourth form because of the excruciating pain she had been enduring for months.
But with support from her family and a determination never to allow her disability to define who she is, Tiffany at 28 has been working at the National Commission on Disability for the past eight years as a data entry clerk and assistant researcher. For her, helping to improve the lives of women with disabilities is a must.
Of major concern to her is the domestic violence women with disabilities suffer daily, and she said often they are the silent victims as many don’t even notice them. For these victims, Tiffany told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview, there are two things working against them: the fact that they are women and the fact that they have a disability, and this makes life for them much more difficult.
“The fact that she is a woman with disability limits her, to have to look back at herself and assess whether she is confident to be out there… [so] you find there are women with disabilities who are in abusive relationships,” she said.
Owing to the fact that many times their partners are not disabled, these women are afraid to leave, Tiffany said, as frequently they hear words like, “Who will look after you, nobody else would want you.” This creates a fear and as a consequence they feel they will have to continue depending on the abusive partner.
She pointed out that if a woman is in a wheelchair it is difficult for her to access a police station to make a report; if she is deaf there is no police officer to communicate with her; if she is blind many times there is no one to take her to the station.
“So there are these barriers that she has to face, even if she feels strong enough to make a report against her abusive partner,” and she wondered how many women’s groups know about the struggles of women with disabilities.
She said many persons feel that people with disabilities should not have families, and as a consequence those persons themselves often start to feel the same way. She works to make women realize that it is their basic human right to be able to choose whether they want to have a family or not, among other things.
Tiffany faces a daily battle just to get to work from her Beterverwagting, East Coast Demerara home using public transportation, but for her that is “small potatoes” compared to what others endure, and for her to wheel herself from Quamina and Camp Streets to Croal Street every day is a form of exercise ‒ one which she repeats in the afternoon. The only problem she encounters when wheeling herself through the streets is the remarks from men, some of whom push their heads through the windows of vehicles, while others follow her part of the way repeatedly offering to take care of her if she gives them a chance.
“It gets creepy at times,” she admitted.
“When it comes to transport that is my main problematic area, because if I miss a particular bus that picks me up in the morning, I know for sure I am going be at work late… because you find that people can be so uncouth because a bus would stop for you and they would shove past you. I have literally had people trying to crawl over me,” Tiffany said with a shake of the head.
In the afternoons she would wait for hours at the corner of Camp and New Market Streets for a minibus, and sometimes she does not get home until 8pm.
‘Normal childhood’
Before age 15 Tiffany said she had what she described as a “normal childhood, the whole climbing trees and falling down and stuff like that,” even though she received a steady injection for the fever and was susceptible to infections. Prior to discontinuing school altogether, Tiffany sometimes would be away because of an illness for months.
“When I acquired my disability I was at school, but it was something that had started to happen for a while but we never really paid attention to it because you know being a rheumatic fever case I was sick a lot and we were just going along with it,” she said.
She revealed that for some time she would be walking normally and would suddenly fall; then it became difficult to walk for long distances, and by the time she was 15 it got so bad that she was unable to walk on her own. She became hospitalized and while the doctors were unable to figure out what was the reason for her losing mobility in her legs they knew it had something to do with the rheumatic fever.
For a long time the pain in her legs was so intense that for days she wished they could have been amputated, and this was compounded by being stricken with pneumonia. It was not easy coping without the use of her legs, but Tiffany said she was always determined to overcome the depressing days and see the brighter sides of things.
“I have life; there are people who are worse off than I am and they are still coping with it, [so] why should I be bitching about it… that is how I started to take a positive outlook on life,” she explained, noting that there are persons with worse disabilities that hers who advocate for the rights of others.
She has since been trained as a facilitator to hold workshops dealing with advocacy, human rights, HIV/AIDS, among other things, and she has been doing her part to improve the lives of persons with disabilities.
She is now the assistant coordinator for the regional disability network in the Caribbean, which works towards ensuring that women with disabilities realize they can still contribute. She has not yet been able to start a disability group in Guyana, which is one of her goals. Tiffany noted that there are many disabled groups already in existence but she wants to focus on women and on helping them to access economic opportunities and to liaise with other women’s groups in catering to the specific needs of women with disabilities.
For her women with disabilities should able to access the Ministry of Human Services & Social Security Women of Worth (Wow). It is important that these women become economically empowered to ensure that they are able to support themselves.
An eloquent speaker, Tiffany never wrote CXC or attended university, something that surprises many who have interacted with her, but she said her speech and her interactions with others come from reading and how her family took care of her.
“After I acquired my disability, my mom didn’t just put me in a corner and say ‘oh leave her alone’; she pushed me to whatever dreams and goals I wanted to pursue, she kept pushing me towards it,” Tiffany said of her mother who unfortunately passed away three years ago.
She now lives with her older brother and Tiffany said he along with her two other siblings, her father and other relatives continue to be very supportive of her. When she is at home she uses a cane as she has regained partial mobility in her legs, but she said that this has become more difficult in recent times as she falls quite often.
She was drawn to graphic and web designing, and in fact anything to do with computers even though when she was about seven years old she wanted to be a cardiologist. One day she hopes to own her business doing graphic and web designing and that is now her main goal. She is very creative at night and it would be a plus to work for herself so that she could have flexibility.
Her work at the commission is her first job, where she started out as a work study student after studying information technology at Open Door Centre, a school designed for persons with disabilities.
