Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun: A Memoir from the Heart of Haiti

by Vilmond Joegodson Déralciné

  “No, no, patron … I could see that you are with some people in clean clothes. I just … well …”

  I told him, “Ah ha! I see that if I was in your place, and you were in mine, that you would humiliate me by not deigning to speak with me. Not so?”

  “No, no, it’s not that. Just … I didn’t want to dirty you,” he tried to assure me.

  “You are more important to me than my clean church brothers over there. You live together with me. If I have trouble in the middle of the night, I’m going to count on you to take me to the hospital. You wouldn’t let me down, would you?”

  “No.”

  “If the church brothers ever have to respond to my problems, it will be when I’m already dead. But you, you’ll be the one to assure my survival.”

  He accepted my argument in defence of solidarity. He promised me that, in the future, he would not take me for someone superior to him. He agreed that friends should respect each other regardless of what they looked like and how clean we were. How strange that he should see me, of all people, as socially superior!

  chapter six

  EVEN IN MY CHURCH IN DELMAS 33, when I would say that I was raised in Site Solèy, they thought that I was lying. Since I was a comic with a baby face, they knew that I couldn’t be from Site Solèy. While those neighbourhoods were nearby Site Solèy, they might have been in another country for all that they understood about us.

  In Delmas 19, we could always hear the violence in Simon. It was like we were getting the news directly. When the radio reported that there had been a shoot-out in Simon, we already knew because we had heard it in progress. One day, in Delmas 19, we heard long exchanges of gunfire coming from Simon. We were sitting around and one guy, a young mechanic, was standing. While we were listening to the gunfire, he thought that someone had thrown a stone at him. He touched his head to see that there was a trickle of blood. He followed a Haitian custom of massaging the small injury with a coin. Despite the massage, the little bump remained. The others that had been sitting around him advised him to go to the hospital to have an x-ray taken. When he went, the x-ray showed that a bullet had lodged under his skin, but had not pierced his skull. The doctors removed the bullet, telling him that he was not in danger. They said that the bullet must have come from a distance and had lost its momentum. When he returned with the x-ray as proof that he had been shot, people started to be careful about where they assembled. Simon was too close for comfort.

  The young mechanic kept the bullet as a souvenir. We couldn’t know if it had been fired by the MINUSTAH soldiers or a Haitian. The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) soldiers were sent to Haiti by the United Nations to — so we were told — make it stable after President Aristide had been forced out of the country in February 2004. In fact, they kept the country unstable, as if that was their job. But even the MINUSTAH troops, at least at first, were worried about how much the Haitian bourgeoisie hated us poor. The bullet may have come from somebody working for Andy Apaid or Reginald Boulos — who owned the sweatshops where people worked. Hating us and hating Aristide was the same thing for them.

  People in Delmas decided that it was of little importance who fired the rifles. The fact that bullets from Simon could land in Delmas 19 increased their fear and contempt for their violent neighbours. They resented living in fear. For my part, I felt that every bullet fired in Simon was aimed at my reputation. While the people of Delmas would simplistically insult the inhabitants of Simon, I knew what was really happening. Each time I visited home, I saw the effects of the violence in the eyes of the old and young of Simon. The exchanges of fire became so intense that the air was putrid. It was impossible to avoid it. The eyes of everyone in Simon were a sickly yellow-orange colour.

  I felt sorry for the elderly. And pity for the youth. The eyes of the elderly revealed not only the physical effects of the poisoned atmosphere, but the despair of being powerless to influence the community they had built. They had lost their place in Simon. They lived in fear. Where they had once had influence over the youth of the community, they now watched helplessly as the young were drawn into violence. When the boys arrived at adolescence, it was normal for them to enter into a gang. Their standing among their peers depended upon them proving themselves. Once planted, the violence reproduced itself. The parents watched as their role was eclipsed by violence. They were no longer the mentors of their children. Their counsel was no longer sought. In the face of the deadly violence, they seemed almost foolish. Their fear only discredited them further, because now young men judged everything in terms of recklessness — which they called courage — in the face of violence. The less respect you had for life and for other people, the more you were respected.

  In Simon, there were schoolchildren, innocent pedestrians, and both older and younger citizens who refused to accept the new violent order. Many people would have left Simon and Site Solèy, but the cost of living prohibited them. It cost very little to rent a small room there, and very little was what everyone had. So they remained even as the world fell apart around them. Religion became more important than ever. Pastors preached Christ’s message of peace as a counterpoint to the violence around them. And some of us hoped that religion could defeat the violence and hatred that was taking root.

  The people were extremely poor. The violence was making their poor lives miserable. But they wanted above all to guard their dignity. People outside of Simon and Site Solèy had already discredited them, however, because of the violence. Everyone was thrown into the same boat. In their eyes, the people of the violent zones had no dignity. Outsiders never understood the courage that it could take to struggle against violence in that environment. Or to live with that poverty. The poor continued to work harder than ever to retain their dignity in their own eyes. Those outside would never understand. The rich, even the less poor, could not know the challenges that we faced.

  Many people liked living in Site Solèy. Why? It was not expensive to live there. By identifying and filling a local need, you could earn a living. There were honest and dishonest businesses. For example, in the centre of Site Solèy, gangs were in control. Each block had its own gang. The blocks fought against each other. Each local gang fought to increase its power in relation to all the others. Sometimes, gangs sought to align themselves with political parties. Sometimes, political parties looked for the support of gangs. Local civil wars were initiated from outside when gangs were able to find material support from one party or another. Political parties, in other words, used the local gangs as proxies to fight their battles.

  Many Haitians wanted to know what role MINUSTAH was playing in the local wars. Each time that MINUSTAH’s mandate was approaching its end, there was suddenly an increase in the violence. Who was behind it? It appeared that some people wanted MINUSTAH to remain and were fuelling the violence to ensure that.

  Some gangs were involved in kidnapping. But the origins of kidnappings were never clear. Who ordered them? The objective was usually financial. And the process was simple: target someone with money to demand a ransom. But anyone from any class could initiate a kidnapping. The children of the very wealthy could enter into partnership with gangs of Site Solèy to target someone from their own class. Policemen could be involved, knowing that they would not be discovered. Conservative politicians were known to initiate kidnappings in order to discredit the poor zones like Site Solèy by associating them with criminality. Site Solèy and Bel Air, for example, were used as a cloak to hide many crimes. The rich could distance themselves, literally, from the crimes that guaranteed their wealth.

  In my childhood, the parents of Simon were a collective authority. My father, for instance, would delegate his authority over us to the neighbours if he were to leave us in their charge. They had the authority to discipline us, to hit us even, if we misbehaved. And so it was with all the parents and all the children. The arrival of MINUSTAH in Simon in 2004 changed the dynamics. Simon was caught in the crossfire. Kids grew up se
eing that real power was connected with mortal weapons. The leaders began to recruit even young children into their gangs. Sometimes, they were assigned the most dangerous jobs. The communal authority of the parents that I had known throughout my childhood was undermined.

  It was easier for the children to follow the gangs than to follow their parents. They wanted to fight MINUSTAH. MINUSTAH represented a foreign occupation. To submit to MINUSTAH was, for the younger generation, a sign of defeat, a loss of self-respect and dignity. To fight the foreign occupiers was a sign of strength and courage. MINUSTAH, simply by appearing and staying in Simon, assured that the violence would intensify. MINUSTAH became the main opposition of all the gangs in the poor districts of the capital region: Bel Air, Site Solèy, Boston, Pele, and so on. MINUSTAH was the key gang. It had access to the most modern war materiel: tanks, automatic rifles, and helicopters. MINUSTAH raised the level of the violence. Now, all of the gangs had to match the firepower of the foreign occupiers. But they couldn’t. So they had to outsmart them.

  The children and youths of Simon began to judge each other according to the size and destructive power of their personal arms. But arms were expensive. By entering the right gang, a youth could assure himself of a weapon that increased his standing and self-importance. He would be given orders by the commandant of his gang. Having replaced the parents as the local authorities, the gangs had to accept certain responsibilities in the communities in order to build a base of support.

  One family in Site Solèy that I would get to know had fallen on hard times, even more than most. Economically, the family was destitute. They had a cute little boy named Zakari. When he was ten years old, Zakari had already taken a leading role in providing for the family. Nearby was a wharf. He used to go there to “fish” for birds. He would hook the small fish and throw the line into the water. Birds would come down to grab the fish and fly away. However, Zakari would have hooked them. He reeled them in as though he was fishing the sky. The birds brought a pretty good price in the local market.

  Sometimes, he caught birds that had rings attached to their feet. He didn’t know what purpose these identification rings served, but he said that he was “fishing” out of necessity and couldn’t worry about disrupting somebody’s scientific experiment. He normally kept a couple of the birds for his own family to eat and sold the rest to buy staple ingredients: rice, oil, water, and coal. Sometimes, he needed to catch more birds to buy other necessities. At ten, Zakari was a successful provider.

  Zakari had lots of little friends in the neighbourhood. He was popular. The older boys also took note of him. All of the children are watched and judged for their utility. The commandant of one gang chose Zakari to act as his main antenna. An antenna is a young child who acts as a spy for the gang leaders whose movements and actions are limited as a result of their notoriety. Antennas are chosen for their intelligence, fearlessness, and apparent innocence. Zakari was the perfect antenna: intelligent, bold, cute, and small even for a ten-year-old.

  Before each operation that the gang mounted, Zakari would check out the terrain. He would appear to be an innocent little boy playing in the street. Actually, however, he was on a reconnaissance mission, noting the strength of the MINUSTAH troops, what space they were occupying, how the mission could advance or retreat if necessary, for instance. For kidnappings and robberies, Zakari would have to see who was around and imagine what might interfere with the mission. To do his work, this little boy had to be well versed in all of the activities of the gang.

  As time passed, the MINUSTAH soldiers came to see Zakari’s appearances before the gang’s operations as more than a coincidence. They knew that Zakari was the gang’s antenna. One day, Zakari’s gang was planning an attack on MINUSTAH. Zakari appeared first, as usual. He exited from one of the narrow corridors that separated the concrete houses. A MINUSTAH sniper was waiting for him and shot him in his lower spinal column. Zakari fell to the ground. The MINUSTAH soldier ran towards Zakari to take him into the military base. But the gang members had already recovered him and hid Zakari from MINUSTAH. After a period of time, they took him to the hospital, Lakou Trankilite in Simon. It was there that I would get to know Zakari several years later; he would have an important impact on my life.

  chapter seven

  FÉDRIK WAS BORN IN GROS MORNE, in the north of Haiti. During his childhood, he sometimes visited his cousin in Site Solèy. One day, his cousin asked his mother, Joseline, to allow Fédrik to live with her in the capital. Everywhere in the Haitian countryside, the peasants believe that things are better in the city. So, Joseline thought that she was doing her son a service by accepting the proposition.

  When his cousin used to visit her home community in Gros Morne, she would bring pèpè and other stuff from the capital. The peasants were always impressed. In fact, the pèpè was inexpensive: second-hand clothing from North America that street merchants sell to their poor clients. Site Solèy was the most populous and squalid of all the slums in the capital. But the peasants only saw that their cousin seemed to have things they did not. They did not take into account that they had things — more valuable — that their urban cousin did not.

  Very little money circulated among the peasants around Gros Morne. They had little need for money, since they grew what they ate. Their survival was assured as long as natural disasters like hurricanes and droughts did not destroy the balance of their lives. They raised livestock that they could sell for money. Peasants call cows, pigs, and goats their bank accounts. With the money that they might earn from their sale they could repair a roof or build a home. When peasants moved to the city, they needed to make a quick adjustment. There, they were dependent on money for their survival. They needed to sell their time and skills in exchange for the money that they needed to keep their families alive. When they looked at their relatives who returned from their homes in the capital and saw that they had money, the peasants assumed that life in the city must be wondrous. But the money that is a luxury for peasants is an absolute necessity for urban Haitians.

  In fact, the peasants could not understand the depth of the problems of their cousin in Site Solèy. What’s more, the cousin contributed to their misapprehension of the real state of affairs in Site Solèy. She wanted to present herself in the best light, to not acknowledge how badly things were going for her in the capital. Instead of explaining to her relatives the real state of affairs, she pretended that her life was improving. So, she would bring pèpè for little Fédrik. The family was impressed. It was a small expense for her. She gave them a false impression. Simple, uncritical people judge by appearance. They can’t put the puzzle together if they have only a couple of pieces.

  After Fédrik had moved to Site Solèy, his cousin used to return with him to Gros Morne during the school vacations. There, Fédrik’s mother asked the cousin if she could find some work for her. She said that things were going badly in Gros Morne. Her cousin agreed to look for a job for her in the capital.

  The cousin worked as a street merchant in Site Solèy. Like many others, she sold whatever she could find: pèpè, produce, rice, coal, and anything else that she could resell to bring in a few gourdes. She would sometimes pile her merchandise in a basket and carry it on her head through the streets of other neighbourhoods in the capital. One day, while working in Petionville, she encountered a fellow merchant who told her that she knew of a family that was looking for domestic help. She thought of Fédrik’s mother and went to Gros Morne to tell her of the opportunity.

  Fédrik’s mother came to the capital and began working as a domestic in Petionville. There, she became involved in a romantic relationship with the gardener on the property. He had a small property of his own in Bourdon, close to Petionville. She left her work for the family and moved in with him. There, he looked to set her up in business as a street merchant.

  Fédrik left Site Solèy and joined his mother and her new partner in Bourdon.

  Sometimes, his mother bought sacks of pèpè for resal
e. Fédrik would help her carry the bales of second-hand clothes to her room and sort them. Members of the diaspora buy the cast-offs by the kilogram in North America. Then they ship them to Haiti where they are unloaded on the docks and distributed around the island. Merchants buy the box — sight unseen — and then separate what can be resold from the pieces stained or ripped. Usually, they can recover about 70 percent of their purchase. They take it to their public location and try to resell it to recover their investment and make a profit. That profit is never assured.

  Once Joseline was established in her new commerce, her second son joined them in Bourdon from Gros Morne. He wanted to become a mechanic. Now that his brother had settled with them in the capital, Fédrik decided to join him in learning to be a mechanic. Until then, he had just been helping his mother set up her pèpè business. His new stepfather helped them find a garage that was willing to take them on as apprentices.

  Once they began their new trade, the boys had to withstand the initiation rites of the established mechanics. Sometimes, they would have to put up with humiliations and abuses. His brother took it all in stride, but Fédrik found the atmosphere offensive. After awhile he decided to leave his brother and the garage. When there was electric current, he would watch Chinese kung fu movies badly dubbed into English. All he could understand was the martial art that impressed and impassioned him. He wanted to become an expert.

  Fédrik found a karate class in the village of Solidarite and began his lessons. The school gave two different classes each day. Fédrik was so motivated that he took them both. He became obsessed with developing his karate skills. His mother and brother were as unhappy as he was excited. They wanted him to learn something that would bring money into the household. His skills would not translate into an income. But, obsessed, he could not stop. In order to reach each new level, Fédrik had to train and to compete. After he had achieved his goal of reaching a new level, he immediately set about to gain the next coloured belt. So hooked was he that it would have been easier to leave his family than karate. He carried on until he had his black belt.