The Tribune

After the US State Department’s report last week accused a Bahamian care institution of neglect and inadequate medical provision, Ava Turnquest, Tribune Chief Reporter, paid a visit. She gained a very different impression.

The camp at the end of Lazaretto Road, southern New Providence, is often marginalised as a last resort, or purgatory, for people suffering from HIV and AIDS who have been pushed out of society.

Residents of the All Saints Camp, however, say they have found a sanctuary above reproach that has helped them thrive against all odds - and medical expectations - to build a community free from stigma and discrimination.

It’s why the US State Department’s harsh review of the camp in its 2015 Human Rights report has struck a raw nerve among its empowered patients. The report last week stated that patients were subject to extreme neglect, poor nutrition and inadequate medical care.

A tour through the camp on Friday revealed that the facility served not only as a hospice but provided both mental and physical stability and solace for Bahamians that had become refugees in their own country.

“I love it,” said Gwendolyn Bain-White. Mrs White, 66, has lived at the camp for more than five years after she was “dumped” by her family. She met her husband, Ed, at the camp and it was “love at first sight”. They got married and now share one of the new dorm rooms.

“I got diagnosed with HIV; it’s contagious nobody wants you around. They dump me so I don’t have nowhere else to go. I come here, my kids could come to visit me but they don’t. They dump us here and walk off. But I have a garden, I don’t buy nothing I get everything free. I think we’re safer in here.

Of the 50 patients housed at the camp, around 85 per cent are HIV-infected. Others have mobility issues or were abandoned by family or other shelters. The youngest resident is a one-year-old baby girl whose mother, Alexis, has lived at the camp since she was 12.

Garvin Leadon, 35, has lived at the camp since he was 10 and has extremely limited mobility due to cerebral palsy. His fridge and walls are filled with pictures from missionaries and children that have fallen in love with him over the years. Mr Leadon told The Tribune his favourite tv network was TNT.

He is cared for by other residents, who help out as a way to earn their keep and ensure the smooth and sustained operation of the community.

“All we get is the $250 that NIB pays per month,” said Charmaine Rolle, 46.

“So we can’t afford to get a private nurse and persons don’t want to come and work in an AIDS camp, even though he doesn’t but some residents do. So residents help out, he has to be fed all his meals, bathed. So we have patients help out other patients who can’t help themselves; everybody helps out, everybody has a job in here.”

Ms Rolle took extreme issue with the US report, which she felt was extremely hypocritical given her experience living in the United States with HIV. She said housing and medication support was extremely limited, with hundreds of sufferers homeless in Florida. Ms Rolle pointed out that while medication was expensive and inaccessible in the US, healthcare was free in the Bahamas.

Ms Rolle said she was repeatedly put in a hospice while in the US until she was sent home through the Bahamas consulate in Florida.

“I came down, I had nowhere to go, I was in PMH for three days. I was at the Salvation Army for a week. When I was at the Salvation Army they scorned me. The lady there gave me a chair to walk around with to sit on because I wasn’t allowed to sit on their furniture. I cried every single day because my family, everybody, didn’t want nothing to do with me. But Ms Ingraham just loved on me.”

Camp Administrator Diana Ingraham decides whether there is more room at the inn, and for that, her patients are eternally grateful. The report’s findings came as a shock to her.

With help from American missionaries, aged and decaying homes have been almost entirely phased out to bring a sense of structural permanence and vibrance to what was once only an encampment for the country’s forgotten. To an outsider, the physical structures appear to finally match the caring and peaceful experience touted by its residents.

However, after speaking with these proud ‘home owners’, it is clear that the roofs over their heads are leaps and bounds from the treatment they received on the outside.

“I never one day went hungry when I came in here,” said Patricia Woodside, 63, who has spent 11 years in All Saints Camp and credits the facility for her rehabilitation, said. She said she lived at the camp for nearly nine years rent free and now contributes with her NIB payments.

“I came in here, I couldn’t walk and now I’m running, I almost could go in the marathon now. I been in other homes where I eat Quaker Oats what cook Monday morning up to Wednesday morning, just warming it up every morning. From I been here I have never eaten warm up food.”

Ms Woodside called the US report lies and propoganda.

The camp has been outfitted with a hurricane shelter, which brings relief to Ms Ingraham due to the past dificulties experienced when trying to find shelters willing to accomodate patients with HIV. Her main goal, she said, is for patients to feel free and relaxed.

“It’s a great place to be,” said 58-year-old resident Johnathon Armbrister. “I rather be in here than out there because too much crime outside there. In here is a peaceful place. I never experienced neglect and I never seen it. She might not know it but Ms Ingraham made me one of the happiest people in the world.”

Mr Ambristier lives in one of the old wooden duplex homes, which will eventually be torn down to make room for the new dorm blocks. His porch is home to his cat, Goldie, and her five kittens, who he insisted were still too young to be adopted.

“If you see the people here they were dying before they come, malnutritioned,” Mr Armbrister said. “But if you see the before and after it’s tremendous they full right out and in shape. Before they come they were delapidated bad.”

Among the camp’s success stories is Portia Evans-Wallace. When Mrs Wallace, 35, came to the camp she weighed 64lbs and doctors projected that she had two weeks to live. She now weighs 210lbs, has married and no longer lives at the camp.

Lillian Knowles has been living at the camp for 12 years and turns 66 on Wednesday. Although she had difficulty expressing herself, she was emphatic about her love for her home and wrestling icon, John Cena. She was referred to the camp through Social Services.

Patrick Wallace, 54, suffered a stroke that has made it hard for him to express himself clearly. He has lived at the camp since 2004 and the impediment has not stopped him from forging meaningful bonds with his neighbours.

Perry Farrington, 64, was a drug addict who had slept in a graveyard for two and half years until his brother rescued him and brought him to the camp nearly four years ago.

“This place pulled me off the streets,” said Paul Butler, 55. “This place is perfect.”

• aturnquest@tribunemedia.net