Celeste France

Celeste France’s easy smile and laid-back personality are the only immediate clues that she was born in the Caribbean nation of Guyana. You wouldn’t know it from her accent, for example.

Sitting in an Oakland coffee shop, watching the bustling street life outside, she says life in Guyana may have been slower-paced, but it wasn’t always easy.

France's father raised her and her two sisters by himself. The center of their world, France’s father drove her and her sisters everywhere—school, lessons, squash and hockey practices.

But all that changed when he was injured in a car accident and lost the use of an arm. Physical therapy helped him regain partial use of the arm, and it was the rehabilitation process, which France watched with fascination, that inspired France’s interest in rehabilitative science. Today, she will graduate with the Bachelor of Science degree in rehabilitation science from Pitt’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS).

But what brought France from Guyana to Pitt?

The political situation in Guyana deteriorated when France was a child, and long-simmering racial tensions between Afro- and Indo-Guyanese finally boiled over when the American wife of the former president became president herself. In the ensuing turmoil, France’s school was closed.

During that time, France’s new stepmother had migrated to San Diego, and she called for France and her sisters to join her and her sons there. France’s father stayed in Guyana with France’s older sister, Liza, who would graduate from high school within several months; reluctantly he sent France and her younger sister to San Diego.

There, 13-year-old France experienced a cultural shock, as few other West Indians lived in San Diego. According to France, her strong accent prompted her new classmates to think she was British. (Guyana is a former British colony, and Guyanese speak an English patois.) Although France found it difficult to relate to her American classmates, she persevered and soon became integrated into U.S. high school life. When it came to choosing a college, like always, she followed her big sisters’ footsteps to Pitt.

Here, France has worked with a Pitt medical student who is a C-5 quadriplegic (paralyzed from the collarbone down) and with kids at the Children’s Institute in Squirrel Hill. She says her favorite part of therapy is building relationships with patients.

“You see kids come in such bad condition, and when they leave, the difference is amazing,” she says.

Her SHRS advisor, Amy Evans, calls France “a delightful person. She is aware of intercultural issues and willing to educate other people,” Evans says.

After graduation, France plans to earn the Doctor of Physical Therapy degree in SHRS, a three-year program ranked third-best in the country.

While at Pitt, France has been active in Pitt’s Caribbean and Latin American Students Association, where she enjoyed soca, a type of calypso. But Pittsburgh is still a long way from the West Indies, culturally as well as geographically. One day, France would like to return to the Caribbean—maybe Barbados—to open a physical therapy clinic.

There, she says watching the hustle and bustle outside the Oakland coffee shop window, “life is based around family.”