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

by Vilmond Joegodson Déralciné

  chapter twenty-six

  EVERYWHERE, PEOPLE USED the pretext of 12 January to squat on a plot of land. In many cases, it was a necessity; in others, a strategy. There was often not much difference between the two. Even people whose homes mostly or partly survived were in a desperate situation. It would be necessary to get whatever food and water NGOs might distribute. One day, Franchesca’s aunt approached Fédrik. She told him that she had claimed a small plot of land; would he be able to build a tent for them? Fédrik responded, “Of course.”

  “Great. Since you are here, I have already prepared a few things that you can use. I have these two tarps that a friend got from an NGO. I wasn’t able to fight for one. The way they hand them out, you have to be strong enough to fight everyone. I let my friend fight for them and then I paid her. I also have some wood. It’s not a lot, but try to prepare an ajoupa anyway. Then we will be able to sleep there at night. As you know, what’s left of our house is fissured and could fall. We don’t want to lose Franchesca.”

  Fédrik hoped to be able to impress Franchesca, knowing that he had fallen from her favour. The material that her aunt handed to him was not sufficient. He had to be clever in order to find all that he needed to build a decent ajoupa.

  Franchesca’s aunt was happy with his creation. Franchesca and Fédrik started to sleep there at night, while her aunt and cousins remained in the house. One day, Franchesca returned from work to find that the thick plastic tarp had been locked shut. Her aunt had bought a lock and poked holes through the two sides of the tarp to fasten them together, in the way that most people were locking their tents. When Franchesca went to her home, her aunt told her that she had decided that she and Fédrik would be better off in their own tent. The aunt planned to listen for when the NGOs were going to distribute something, then go and unlock the lock and wait to benefit from the distribution. However, if Franchesca and Fédrik were living there, then they would profit and the aunt, whose idea this had been, would be left in the cold. So, she locked Franchesca and Fédrik out. They would have to build another place for themselves.

  Franchesca asked that she let them continue to live there, since it would take a week to be able to construct another. Besides, they would now have to start from scratch. They would have to wait until Franchesca was paid before they could buy the necessary materials and to claim some land.

  On payday, Franchesca handed her pay over to Fédrik to buy the tarps and other materials. Fédrik decided not to build it in the same tent camp where he had built the one for Franchesca’s aunt. He found another tent camp a little distance away. Before the earthquake, the local people had used it for their pigs. They would throw their garbage in that space and, inevitably, the pigs and goats would root through it. The animals came to claim it as their pigsty. This sort of commons existed throughout the capital. Not at all a green commons; rather, its main attraction for the pigs and goats is the garbage. The odour of the local commons in Port-au-Prince is overwhelming. The garbage that offends human senses attracts pigs. Plus, they are comfortable on mattresses of mud. Now, humans were taking over from the pigs.

  There were already sixty families living there. Each newcomer swept the garbage a little to the side, to the displeasure of the previous residents. Eventually, the pigs understood they were being evicted. They had not been disturbed by the earthquake, but now they were feeling the aftershocks. The pigs were ultimately working for their human masters without knowing it. Now, they had to manage for themselves.

  Fédrik built a nicer ajoupa than the one he had made for Franchesca’s aunt. They lived together there. Franchesca got up at dawn each morning to take a taptap to the Industrial Park. Fédrik found himself in the same situation he had faced before his adventure in the Dominican Republic. What to do? He dreamt again of karate, but that dream led in no profitable direction.

  He couldn’t stay in the tent all day. Physics made sure of that. As the sun rose, the tents became unbearably hot inside. From ten in the morning until six o’clock in the evening, no one could stay inside the tents because of the heat and the toxic gases they emitted. Inside, you were at risk of suffocating. Even mosquitoes expired from the toxic heat of the tents.

  Both before she left for work and upon her return, Franchesca complained that Fédrik was still unemployed. As the days passed, she became like a bee in his ear, humming the same monotonous tune. She argued that, since she was working in SONAPI all day long, that he too should find something to do. Together, maybe they could begin to live decently instead of displacing pigs in order to sleep.

  But the advice only frustrated Fédrik, “Well, tell me what to do! I spend all day thinking what to do. Do you want me to get into criminal stuff? It doesn’t sound like you care what I do!”

  “No, Féd! I didn’t say to do something illegal. Just find something!”

  “Okay. Here! I’ll sell our lives to a lwa in exchange for a little food and a nicer place to live. Will that make you happy?”

  Franchesca replied, “No. But since it’s you that is suggesting it, you don’t have to include me in the contract. If you want to deal with a lwa, that’s your business!”

  Fédrik disagreed, “Wait a minute! It’s what you are asking me. You can see very well that the rich are doing better than ever while we live with pigs. Even the lwa are turning people away these days. Port-au-Prince is full of unemployed. More and more, we are unemployable.”

  Fédrik continued to look for work, but without success. Franchesca continued to complain, without relenting. Their time together became predictable, with Franchesca telling him to get a job and Fédrik not knowing how. Fédrik’s frustration built to the point that he wanted to hit Franchesca. When he felt his anger rising to that point, he left the tent and came to visit me. As she complained to him, he complained to me.

  I advised him to talk more with Franchesca … and with compassion.

  I said, “Féd, I can see her point of view. I know the sweatshops. I’ve worked at SONAPI. She’s working really hard in crappy conditions for almost no money. Above all, you’ve got to avoid fights where you’re living in the tent camp. Your neighbours will enjoy a free show. It’s the only entertainment for many of them. And it degrades you. Talk with her with compassion and find the best solution for everyone.”

  He was listening quietly, so I continued, “I think that if you just approach the problem right, you’ll find a solution. It’s not that she doesn’t want you anymore — she’s not talking like that. It’s SONAPI that’s eating at her. If you could spend just one day there, you’d see why she doesn’t come home in peace and with patience.”

  “But you don’t understand, Joegodson,” Fédrik interjected. “She leaves no space for compassion and understanding and patience. She starts harping at me the moment she sees me and follows me around buzzing in my ear. She won’t stop. I’d like to know how to have a civil conversation with her.”

  “Okay, Féd, okay, okay. It’s a good thing that you’ve come here. You were wise. When things heat up in a relationship, the best answer is to cool down. For sure, when you go home, you’re going to find that she has already calmed down. Then, she’ll be ready to listen to you.”

  “No, Joegodson. I know what she wants and so does she. She wants me to work in the sweatshops with her. I don’t want to. There’s no answer because we don’t want the same thing. She treats me like a child. If she could, she would take a strap and beat me all the way to the factory.”

  I said, “Then try to get her to understand that your old dreams still exist. Ask her if she would look for a way to realize them with you.”

  “Dreams?! You think she has any patience for dreams after my experiences in the Dominican Republic? She is not in the mood for dreams and hopes and inspiration. She is hard.”

  “Just try again. Maybe she has forgotten the Dominican Republic. Maybe she can listen to another plan. Just try.”

  Finally, Fédrik agreed to try again. He walked back to their tent.

  �
��Franchesca, just listen. I understand you. Don’t think that I don’t understand what you’re going through. I know that working in the factories is worse than slavery. We cannot accept it. That is the thing that’s killing you.”

  Franchesca answered, “Féd, the only reason I go to work is to keep us from being ashamed in front of my family. If I go home and start complaining about you, they will start gossiping about us. We’ll be finished before we start.… How can we free ourselves from this monster that is zombifying us?“

  “We have to think about creating something together — a business. Like that, we’ll be independent of the sweatshops.”

  “What if I were to enter a sabotay? I could put aside some money. I’ll take the first place in the sabotay. I’ll pass the money on to you while I carry on working just to pay it off. When it’s over, I’ll quit my job at the sweatshop and join you in the business.”

  A sabotay is a voluntary union of workers who are underpaid in the sweatshops of Port-au-Prince. Sabotays have been in existence for decades and there are, at any given time, a number available to join. When I once worked at SONAPI, I was the “Papa” of a sabotay. If a woman organizes it, she is called the “Manman.” The Manman or Papa must be well-respected for their honesty and good judgment. The workers are motivated to join a sabotay because they can trust the organizer and the other workers to honour their responsibilities to the others.

  The idea is simple in principle. A sabotay is organized to allow workers to save enough money to attempt to realize some dream. Each payday, the members hand the Manman or Papa a portion of their pay. Also, each payday, one member of the sabotay receives the collected amount of all the others. The amount depends on how long you have been paying and how much you contribute each payday. There are all sorts of sabotay available depending on what you can contribute and how big your dreams are. The sabotay pays you back only what you have contributed, less a small administrative fee for the Manman or Papa. So why bother? Why not just save the money yourself or hand it to a trusted friend or put it in a bank? Because no one trusts him- or herself to save anything. When you are hungry, you eat if there is any money available for you to buy food. If your money is in a sabotay, however, you cannot access it until the date that you had agreed upon when entering it. There are risks, of course. But workers trust the Manman or Papa to have stronger willpower than they have. The Manman or Papa will allow the participant to go hungry, knowing that in several months, he or she will be compensated for their sacrifices by their payout.

  Fédrik was overwhelmed by Franchesca’s idea. She would sacrifice everything and sentence herself to working at a job she hated to free them from a life of penury. Mostly, he was humbled by the enormous confidence she was showing in him. She would give him all her money from months of work, in the hope that he could use it to establish some business.

  Franchesca entered into the sabotay as planned. She worked sixty hours a week and made 3,200 gourdes ($80.87 US) every two weeks. She paid 2,400 gourdes ($60.65 US) each payday into the sabotay, which would be paid back to her in July. She couldn’t leave it until it was finished and all the members had been compensated as she would be. But there was no margin for error in this scheme. In order to be able to pay it back, she had to sacrifice food. It was a plan that ignored basic human needs. She soon fell sick … but she continued to work. She had no other choice now that she was beholden to a sabotay.

  One morning, as she prepared to go to work, her head was spinning and she felt exceedingly tired. Fédrik tried to comfort her by rinsing her face with cool water, but it didn’t help. She tried to walk, but couldn’t find the strength to go more than a few steps.

  Fédrik had just enough money to pay for a taptap, and no more. He called me. I had only 100 gourdes ($2.50 US), which I gave to him. I encouraged him to take her to a hospital and let the doctors take care of her. We would find whatever money was necessary by borrowing from neighbours and friends.

  Fédrik helped Franchesca into a taptap and then half carried her into a clinic in Delmas 19. Since it was a private hospital, they examined her and then admitted her. The nurses gave her an intravenous, not before reproaching Fédrik for having kept her at home for so long. They said that she was in an advanced stage of malaria. She was days away from death.

  Franchesca asked the nurses if she would be well enough to go to work. If they were not informed, they would surely fire her. And she needed to keep her job.

  The nurses were amazed, “Are you crazy or what? Aren’t you aware that you are on the edge of death. What kind of work is so important that you have to be there? What’s at stake in this job?”

  “You don’t understand. If I show any weakness, my place will be taken by someone outside. I can’t afford that.”

  “Better that you go to work and collapse over the machines, dead? Not only do you have malaria, but you’re suffering from malnutrition. You think that you are lucky to be working at such a job?”

  “No, but we need it. The company helps us,” Franchesca said.

  “Help you! Help you how? Help you do what? I have never had a case of a bourgeois suffering from malnutrition. You don’t even have enough in your system to survive, let alone work! … There are two vitamins that you need in your body. I can inject them into the intravenous. But you’ll have to pay for them. If you give me the money, I’ll be able to buy them for you.”

  Franchesca waved her hand, “I have nothing. Fédrik is trying to raise some money among the neighbours. When he gets back, maybe he’ll have enough.”

  The nurse was amazed to hear that Franchesca was worried about getting back to a job that couldn’t pay her enough to buy vitamins to treat malnutrition. Her life was literally in the balance and she was worried about losing a job!

  Frustrated, the nurse left Franchesca. She wasn’t sure if Franchesca was sane.

  Meanwhile, Fédrik was able to find nothing among his neighbours in the pigsty camp. The people did not choose to live there because of their wealth. If they had a few gourdes, many chose to spend them on klarin in order to forget the smells and squalor of their hopeless lives. They didn’t budget for medical costs.

  Totally broke, Fédrik walked a few kilometres from pigsty camp to visit his mother in Bourdon. She was seated in front of her pèpè on the street corner. She could tell by the way that her son approached that he was not bringing good news.

  “What ill wind is blowing you here?”

  “Problems,” he said quietly.

  “Look at the son I have! I was hoping he would come to tell me that he finally had a job to help his mother escape her problems. Instead, he brings more of his own.… Well, all right. What is it?”

  “Ah, Manman. This country is not for me. I’ve tried to find something. But I have failed. The more I try to make troubles disappear, the bigger they get.”

  “What troubles? Please don’t tell me that Franchesca is pregnant while you aren’t working.”

  He replied, “No. Worse. It’s not about life, but death. She’s very sick. She has been sick for awhile, but … again, it’s my fault … I just thought it was stress from her work and living in the tent. If I don’t act fast, she’s going to die.”

  His mother dropped her head to the ground and sighed in despair. She said, “I can’t lend you money, because you have no income. Tell Franchesca that I’ll lend this to her,” she said, as she handed Fédrik 3,000 gourdes ($74.57 US). “This is from my business, but it’s more important to save a life than to keep a thousand businesses going.”

  Fédrik’s despair gave way to relief. He left his mother free of the weight that made every step an effort. He went to visit his brother in the garage who contributed another 1,000 gourdes ($24.86 US).

  Leaving the garage, he bought a few drinks and a container of prepared rice to bring to the hospital. When he arrived, he found Franchesca sitting alone on the side of her bed talking to herself, her head in her hands. “Fran, why aren’t you lying down? What’s wrong? Is it worse?
”

  “How am I going to get down to the factory to explain?”

  “Forget about that for the minute. When you’re sick, the only thing that matters is to get better. Listen, we are saved.”

  Franchesca thought that he had found a job. She sat up alert to hear the good news.

  Fédrik said, “Everywhere I tried, people were in worse condition than us. So I went to Bourdon. I arrived just as my mother was preparing some money to buy her next package of pèpè. But she lent it to us. Then my brother lent us some more.”

  Franchesca was unhappy to hear about these loans. She simply slouched back into her gloom. Fédrik implored her, “Fran, say something.”

  So she did: “Don’t you see anything? These loans have to be paid back. How?”

  “It’s not the time to be thinking of that. The first thing to do is to get you better.”

  “Féd! We were supposed to be starting a business together. I’m in a sabotay. Now, all of that is just to pay back these loans. We’re finished before we have even started.”

  The truth kept Fédrik quiet. He walked out into the courtyard, dejected. He didn’t want to continue that discussion. He waited until dusk and returned to her room.

  “Fédrik. Listen. Tomorrow, what if you went to the factory for me? You can tell my bosses why I’m not there. Also, I’ll give you my badge and you can pick up my pay. There are two weeks waiting for me. That’ll be 3,200 gourdes ($79.55 US).”