By Shamar Blunt
Barbadians may have long grown accustomed to the poor state of many of the island’s roads. But the conditions are proving to be a greater hindrance to those with disabilities.
One such person facing this challenge is Cassandra Paula, who, since moving to Barbados from the island of Curaçao in 2020, has been grappling with using her motorised wheelchair or her “car” as she refers to it, on deplorable roads in her Tent Bay, St Joseph community.
This experience has unfortunately had an adverse effect on the medical condition with which she lives.
“It’s more than just a road with potholes because with muscle myopathy, it’s very difficult to use the road that is so demanding on the body. It’s causing me to prepare [early]; I have to make sure that my activities that I am going to during the day, say a trip in a car, I have to structure and plan everything and rest,” she explained.
Myopathy affects the muscles and leads to weakness in the muscle fibre, causing them not to function properly. The disease was one of the main reasons that led Paula to Barbados when the Welcome Stamp Initiative was first launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Though she stressed that the environment on the island has, for the most part, had been a positive effect on her ailment, particularly for her missionary work, the state of the road outside her home, in a popular tourist area, has caused her body to be overworked most days, even when completing simple tasks.
“When I arrived here, my health condition was actually worse. I really needed to sleep in the ‘car’ because it was too much for my spine muscles to sit up with all the bumps,” Paula explained. She noted that she is often forced to nap while using the chair because manoeuvring around the roads sometimes leaves her too tired to get out of it when she gets home.
“I had quite a lot of medical and health appointments which were actually on the south coast, 45 minutes away by car. Sometimes I had to increase my medication just to deal with the roads.
“Yes I look very healthy, look very vibrant and whatever, but that is not the case internally healthwise… I really need to take care and minimise anything that can accelerate my decline because I want to live longer.”
In order to help draw wider attention to her plight and that of her community, Paula has hand-delivered letters to the Ministry of Transport, Works and Water Resources, as well as the Ministry of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs, with the hope that something could be done to correct the dire situation.
She acknowledged that while on the surface, much has been done over the years for the differently-abled community, a lot of it has been poorly executed.
“Somebody mentioned something and I thought it was actually quite interesting, and it was that being disabled is like an unfinished thought. I totally understand it if I look at my experiences. If you go up to the pavement and you drive a long way on it to find out that you can’t get off at the other side.
“It’s like a good thought. I can go up one side, but the other side I could not go down. There are unfortunately some facilities that just don’t have enough room to manoeuvre, or a ramp to have access.”
Meanwhile, Tiffany Niles, Property Manager at ECO Lifestyle and Lodge, which is also located in Tent Bay, said that even though she is not from the area, the lack of care for the road, which is used widely by tourists, has been evident.
“I never really used to traverse to this side of the island, so it was a huge shock – I mean the roads on the island in general – but in this area they are truly neglected.
“I’ve been here from 2016, and from then until now, the degree of wear and tear has just increased and increased and we have not seen any sort of real improvements to the roads.”
shamarblunt@barbadostoday.bb
