One step forward, two steps back

Six weeks after Schneily Similien received his artificial leg, the 4-year-old amputee and his family are finding that life in post-quake Haiti is one step forward, two steps back.

Schneily's father, Ducarmel Similien, remains grateful that his youngest son was fitted with a prosthetic limb to replace his crushed left leg and foot.

"He is doing good with his leg," Ducarmel said through a translator, adding that the boy can run, jump and even kick a ball while balancing on his fake leg, a milestone for child amputees.

But the 40-year-old carpenter was disappointed to learn that an anticipated job is no longer available at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, where the U.S.-based Hanger Orthopedic Group’s new clinic has treated more than 200 amputees since February. The position didn't work out after communication mix-ups and cutbacks at the hospital's woodworking center.

That leaves Ducarmel and his wife, Darline, 37, unemployed and struggling to provide for Schneily and his brothers, Scarcely, 13, and Schmeider, 10.

The family recently left a tent city in Leogane, eager to escaped the crowded, noisy, unsanitary encampment. They were able to return to their former home in the city outside Port-au-Prince, a house owned by Darline's mother. But the house was severely damaged in the quake and the second floor quarters, where Schneily was injured when the ceiling collapsed, remain uninhabitable.

Now Schneily's family is camped in a tent in the courtyard of their shattered former home, five people to one bed, with no income and little food, trying to come up with a plan for the future.