While arriving at the shelter at Máximo Gómez , she was already operated of uterine cancer . Years later a colon tumor arose and she underwent surgery again . The right side of her colon was removed , but she was fine at that time compared to her current health conditions . She has suffered two cerebral infarcts and half her body is paralyzed . She can neither climb the stairs to the intermediate level where the beds are , nor sleep on a mattress over the floor , because it would be extremely difficult to get up for going to the bathroom at night . She must sleep down on the couch . She suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and asthma , as well as from fluid in the right lung and generalized osteoarthritis . Per the orthopedic physician , she can become completely disabled . Just talking is exhausting for her . She is not able to speak fluently and breaks off the conversation to take a breath . The continuing lack of oxygen forces her to use a salbutamol spray at every moment and to pick up the conversation again and again trying to recalling the already forgotten words . When I list her medications , I assume that she gets by on retirement checks , but she is not a retired person , although she worked for twenty years . She is being supported by her husband . In 2015 , her dream was " to stop sleeping on a sofa for sleeping on my own bed ". It was about to come true : due to so many diseases , the authorities considered her an exceptional case and promised to move her to a better place . After my visits to the shelter in 2015 , a Communist Party ( CP ) militant came to find out who had been interviewing people there and where the interviewers came from . Kirenia told me that a neighbor responded : " No one came here ( plus a dirty word ). What you must do is to finally solve our problems . Look how we are living here ." The CP gentleman left . At the same place with the same people
In 2016 I returned to Máximo Gómez 27 . What had changed ? There were other flies receiving me at the entrance , the floor had begun to sink and the walls were flaky . Santa works cleaning for 275 pesos a month and must take water from a cistern , because there is no installation for running water . Now she is suffering more back pain than a year before . She stays here — like Alina — with her children and grandchildren . Despite being a prioritized case , Vivian has not received housing yet . " I was ready to relocate in Roble Dos ." Kirenia specifies it ’ s in Guanabacoa and Vivian adds : " In the infinity ." She tells me that her husband went to see the place and had to walk eleven blocks after the bus stop . " There is no medical office . My husband works ; if I feel pain , I have no one around . The place is isolated . I cannot walk eleven blocks . After a few meters , I get agitated and if I walk more , my whole-body hurts . The Shelter ’ s Municipal Directorate was going to give me something in Casablanca , where my daughter lives . She works , but my granddaughter was going to take care of me . They finally gave the dwelling to a woman who had a subsidy . They say that it was given for temporary use , until this woman could repair her collapsed house , but it ’ s my understanding such cases can ’ t be solve in this manner . They went above the law ." Vivian says that the President of the Local Government and his Director of Housing authorized that woman to occupy the house and gave her the keys . The Shelter ’ s Directorate did not agree . One of the Vivian ' s daughter wrote letters to the government and to the CP in Regla denouncing she had not receive the housing that was supposedly granted to her as an exceptional social case . Vivian showed me a letter sent to and acknowledged by the President of the Local Government in Regla . It raised
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