13726: Joseph (news): Retarded Immigrant Strives for Independent Life (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dotie Joseph <dotiej@hotmail.com>

NY TImes

November 20, 2002
Retarded Immigrant Strives for Independent Life
By ARTHUR BOVINO


ot yet, but soon, I'll have my own room," Kareen Dupervil said.

Ms. Dupervil is 21. She likes to smile. She likes to cook spaghetti and
figure her own way around the complex tangles of New York City subway lines
and bus routes. She has the reading level of a first grader and is mentally
retarded.

She is also fiercely ambitious. She is determined to have that room of her
own.

For much of her life she has struggled in foreign situations and places. She
has also been relentlessly teased. Somehow, she keeps smiling.

"I don't like to laugh all the time," Ms. Dupervil said. "I like to smile,
really."

Danny Bernard thinks he knows why. "That's because everyone says you have a
great smile," suggested Mr. Bernard, her job counselor at the Brooklyn
Bureau of Community Service, one of seven charities supported by The New
York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

She was born in Haiti. When Ms. Dupervil was 7, her mother left to start a
new life in New York. Ms. Dupervil stayed with her grandmother until 1992,
when she was sent to stay with her aunt, Rosie Dupervil, near Paris. She was
placed in a home for the mentally retarded, and for two years, she stayed
there on weekdays and lived with her aunt on the weekends.

Ms. Dupervil grew up speaking French in Haiti, but her fluency did not
prevent her from being taunted in her new surroundings. She said other
students there were "méchants" or mean to her, and they laughed at her
constantly.

When she was 13, she came to New York to stay with her mother and
stepfather. She attended special classes at South Shore High School in
Canarsie, Brooklyn, for four years and learned English.

"I liked math and English because I learned multiplication, subtraction,
math table," she remembered. "I like it."

But some things that she didn't like at all followed her from Haiti to
France to Brooklyn. Once again, she was ridiculed.

"They were always making fun of me," Ms. Dupervil said, looking at the
floor. "They'd call me monkey all the time. Monkey."

"I'm supposed to defend myself, but I didn't know how," she said.

Mr. Bernard was not surprised. "When she first came to B.B.C.S., she was
really shy," he said. "She would stand on her own. She'd had a lot of issues
in high school. She thought we would call her names."

But these days, Ms. Dupervil is adjusting to change, even thriving on it.

Her mother and stepfather moved to Pennsylvania in late September. As for
Ms. Dupervil, she has other plans.

"She doesn't like Pennsylvania; she likes New York better," said her mother,
Christiane Jacquet. "She made her decision. You know, she has to survive if
I'm not there anymore."

After being shuffled from country to country and from one family member to
another, Ms. Dupervil dreams about providing for herself. For now, she is
staying with her mother in Pennsylvania, but she frequently returns to New
York for job interviews, staying with a friend.

"I thought maybe I should really stay here," she said. "I really do like New
York. I really do want to stay here. I have some friends."

Ms. Dupervil wants to be a messenger. She loves the intricacies of the
transit system.

>From 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., while living in New York, she met with groups
of the mentally retarded and counselors and trained at the Schermerhorn
Street office of the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service every day. As part
of the Job-Ready Program, she is told which delivery company to go to, and
she carries an envelope with information about her and the bureau's program
to help place the mentally retarded. Then she returns with a card from the
company.

Since she started with the Job-Ready group at the bureau, she has learned
how to present herself in an interview.

Using money from the Neediest Cases Fund, the bureau gave her money for
clothes that she could wear to job interviews. A thrifty shopper, Ms.
Dupervil spent a mere $29.30 at Goodwill to buy two black skirts, a pair of
black dress pants, three blouses — one white, one gray and black, and
another hunter green.

Since she has been involved in the program, Ms. Dupervil has gone to four
interviews. She said that though she loves being a messenger, she will be
happy with any job she can do well.

She recently applied for a job with Au Bon Pain at La Guardia Airport in
Queens. She also applied for a job at the airport as a baggage handler. She
took a test at the airport with two other mentally retarded adults who train
at the Brooklyn bureau.

Though Ms. Dupervil did not pass, the trainer who gave the test called Mr.
Bernard to encourage her to study and try again.

The bureau will soon start tutoring her for the test twice a week. She will
take the test again in a few months.

The bureau is also trying to find her an apartment in a supportive-housing
building, where someone can check in on her regularly once she moves in. Ms.
Dupervil was recently told there would be a vacancy, probably within the
month.

Her improved self-image and soaring confidence owe a lot to the bureau.
There, Ms. Dupervil has made friends, and she has learned just how to deal
with the decidedly unfriendly, too. "Now I say that's not how you're
supposed to talk to people," she said. "I think I'm beautiful. Now sometimes
I just walk by and don't even listen."





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