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

by Vilmond Joegodson Déralciné

  I said nothing. I was trying to find an exit from this conversation that was making me uncomfortable. If I made the wrong choice, then I could turn myself into a target. I was all the more disquieted by the presence of one of the brothers from my church. He knew me. I knew him. I knew that when I said no, he would be ashamed that he had said yes. This proposal that he and the others were making went against everything that we professed to stand for. But these guys weren’t thugs or criminals or delinquents. They were good boys. Smart.

  I had two choices. Say no and be a coward. Say yes and sell my soul.

  They asked me, “You are afraid, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not afraid.… I just don’t like to act without reflecting.”

  They bought that. “Okay. If you need to think about it, okay. You can think about it until tomorrow. We’ll call you early. We’re going to see him tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

  I had intended to spend the rest of the day in Simon, but I didn’t want to see the guys from that group. I knew that I would say no, but I really didn’t like either of the choices offered.

  I told my father what the boys had proposed and that I wouldn’t be cooperating with them. He was thankful to hear my choice. I excused myself, saying I didn’t want to spend the day in Simon under these circumstances and that I would return soon for a proper visit.

  When I returned to Delmas, I passed the rest of the day dreading their call the following morning. In order to allow my mind some peace, I decided to call them to officially withdraw from their scheme.

  “Tomorrow, I have another rendezvous that is much more important. I’m sorry. I would have liked to participate, but it won’t be possible.” All lies!

  I waited another week before returning to Simon. I really didn’t want to know any more about their plan. My desire to avoid them was greater than my curiosity about the outcome of their scheme.

  When I returned a week later, some of the boys saw me from a distance and waved. But they made no motion to approach me. I could see in their eyes a certain apprehension. I was neither friend nor foe. People like to know precisely where you stand. I was now an unknown entity in their eyes. It was better for everyone that we remain polite and distant now. But it was disappointing to have old friendships disappear into a kind of uneasy courtesy.

  chapter thirty-three

  ONE DAY IN OCTOBER, ten months after the earthquake, I was in Simon talking with my father and my brother, James. A few people came to speak to James. They told him that a meeting was taking place in the MINUSTAH base, the old ice factory, for all of the leaders of the local camps. James went to find out what was happening.

  He soon returned to tell us that MINUSTAH was organizing a program for children between the ages of five and eighteen. Each camp should provide fifteen kids and three supervisors. The fifteen kids would be divided into three groups. Each supervisor would be responsible for five children. MINUSTAH would be giving the children courses in Portuguese, music, soccer, and theatre. Each supervisor would also participate in the course along with the children under his or her charge. The leader of each camp was also invited to participate in whichever of the four disciplines he or she chose.

  He said that MINUSTAH would offer each child who participated a notebook, pencils, and a T-sheet to serve as a uniform. For the next meeting, the camp leaders were to return with the supervisors and the list of children who would participate. That meeting took place at four-thirty that afternoon. Even though James wasn’t yet sure of the details of the program, he went around the camp to talk to the parents in their tents or tikounouks and to compile the list of participants from PCS. James recruited me first and then found two other supervisors.

  I had plenty of reasons to be suspicious of MINUSTAH. Their headquarters, close to my father’s home in Simon, was an old factory. When I was a child, it used to produce ice for the local people. Not only did we appreciate the ice, but some of us worked inside. Street merchants lined up before sunrise to buy big blocks of ice, two metres long. They then set up their blocks, covered by strips of wood to protect them from the sun, and chipped away pieces for their clients who would come by with thermos coolers to buy their day’s supply. Other merchants came from farther away to return to their own neighbourhoods to sell ice in the same way. Many would have an agreement with a taptap driver to collect the ice first thing in the morning, before the taptap driver began his daily route.

  The ice that the factory produced was invaluable. Especially for the poor, a block of ice could melt away the discomfort of living under the scorching heat of the Caribbean sun, compounded by dust and detritus, and without reliable electric current to run refrigerators or fans.

  In February of 2004, President Aristide was forced out of the country. There were all sorts of rumours about whether he left, was forced out, or escaped. It was confusing. But when he was gone, there was no more ambiguity about who had control of the Presidential Palace. And it wasn’t us in Site Solèy. Exactly who owned that palace was less clear.

  After President Aristide was gone, the ice factory was shut down and the building taken over by MINUSTAH troops from the United Nations. It was a great disappointment. It seems that the owner of the factory arrived at an agreement with the United Nations to lease the factory. In my innocence, I said, “But surely, MINUSTAH will continue to make ice for us.”

  “On the contrary,” my wiser neighbours replied. “They have not come to cool us down, but rather to heat up our neighbourhood. They will make trouble.”

  The factory was the most secure and sturdy building in our part of Simon, called PCS. Our neighbourhood was at the centre of a civil war between two gangs: Boston in Site Solèy on one side and Pele on the other. When the young people in Simon, like me, refused to take any side in the constant fighting, we were attacked by both sides. By putting the MINUSTAH troops in PCS, the authorities intended to control the population on all sides.

  Marengwen ap vole ou pa konn mal ak femèl-while mosquitoes are flying, you can’t tell male from female.

  By that time, I was living nearby in Delmas 19. But when I visited Simon, I was used to seeing bullet cartridges lodged in the homes of old people who were neither criminals nor revolutionaries. It scared me. I thought that if old, harmless people were being targeted, then how would I escape the violence? From Delmas 19, we could hear the exchange of gunfire night and day. The people of Delmas were terrified of Site Solèy. Although they lived close by, they never visited Site Solèy and had developed strong prejudices against those of us from those miserable zones. When they found out that I was from Simon, they were often dumbfounded. They had judged me to be a man of peace. I couldn’t be from Simon.

  We went to the MINUSTAH base at four-thirty. Well-armed soldiers guarded the entrance as usual. All of the committee members of the PCS camp were waiting as scheduled, but the soldiers wouldn’t let us enter. We were mixed up with the kokorats who always hung out at the gate, harassing the soldiers and begging for food. The soldiers couldn’t distinguish all the types of Haitians that they saw before them. We were all frying under the same hot sun.

  After a few minutes, the soldier in charge of this program appeared with a list in his hands. He spoke through a Haitian interpreter who announced the name of each camp from a list. The leader of each camp would be allowed entry into the base along with the supervisors. There were ten camps represented, which added up to forty people: the camp leader and three supervisors for each camp.

  Entering the base, I saw on the ground floor half a dozen tanks and several military vehicles. Everything was marked “UN” and coloured pure white to remind us that it was the opposite of Haiti.

  A soldier led us up to the second floor. We all thought along the same lines. We were the enemies of these soldiers and we had penetrated their fortress. We spoke freely together in Creole, knowing that the foreign soldiers were deaf to our language. We wondered if we were being led into a trap or whether we could spring one of our own. We joke
d, but there was a serious undertone to all of our imaginings. We could also see the unease in the soldiers. We were their enemy. The tanks were used against us. And now, we had penetrated. This building had once been ours. It had served us. We had relied upon it to supply us with ice. MINUSTAH had taken it from us and given only bullets and misery in return. They were ignorant of all that, of course.

  We saw where they changed out of their uniforms when they returned from their missions of firing into our homes and killing our friends. Like Zakari. We saw a number of soldiers speaking to their families in Brazil through the computers. Some were downloading images of the poverty of our district from their digital cameras to send home. Others were eating at a table with plates piled with food. Some of us were really hungry. When those people saw the food before them, they started to fantasize that, after the meeting, they would be invited to take a seat at the table. They prayed that, after a short meeting, the MINUSTAH officials would suggest that we all retire to the dining table and eat for the rest of the evening. That would have been the best meeting of all time.

  The sincere wish of every Haitian present was for the shortest meeting followed by the longest meal. The emptier the stomachs of the Haitians, the more full their minds with thoughts of rice, sòs pwa nwa, pitimi, goat meat, chicken, followed by gallons of cool fresh fruit juices sweetened with Haitian sugar: chadek, orange, lemon, sour cherry, pomegranate, poured over piles of ice.

  The goal of MINUSTAH was also to keep the table full. However, it was MINUSTAH soldiers who profited from the bounty. There were no Haitians around the table, either in reality or in their mind’s eye. There was no difference between desire and reality for MINUSTAH. For the Haitians, dreams were the opposite of reality.

  The soldier had no idea that he awoke all the Haitians from their sweet and savoury dreams with his abrupt command, “Okay, let’s get the meeting started.”

  Two MINUSTAH soldiers, a man and a woman, presented themselves before us. The woman translated from his Portuguese to French, leaving our Creole aside.

  “Okay, maybe you don’t know why you were brought here. We will explain why this meeting is very important for you. We want to gather together a number of children from different camps. We will give classes in music, soccer, theatre, and the Portuguese language. As we have already explained to the camp leaders, we need twenty kids from each camp, divided into four groups. Each group will have a Haitian supervisor to be responsible for them. The supervisor will be able to participate in the class also. The supervisor will be responsible for controlling and disciplining the children. If we have to travel to another area, then the supervisors will be responsible for the safety of the children. We want the supervisors to be strict. If not, they will need to be replaced. If a child misbehaves, we will expel both the child and the supervisor from the program. That’s why the supervisors need to be responsible people.”

  Each group was scheduled for a different day. The supervisors were responsible for distributing the kits to their kids. The MINUSTAH soldiers then said that the meeting would end there. If there were any questions, we Haitians could now pose them.

  I asked, “How much time have you set aside for these courses?”

  They answered that the courses would last three months, to finish at the end of November.

  I continued, “I am not an expert in music. But I understand that the subject is vast. Do you think that three months is a reasonable amount of time to impart even a basic knowledge of music? What kind of music will the students be learning? For instance, Haitians have their unique style of music called konpa. Will you teach that? Or will it be Brazilian music? Will there be instruments for the children? What kind of instruments?”

  They said, “You say that you are not an expert, but clearly you have some musical knowledge. Our goal will be just to offer the students some basic principles. So, our lessons will not be based on any particular cultural style, but will impart what is common to all music.”

  Then they asked me if I had been assigned to a musical section. I replied that I had been asked to supervise a group that would learn Portuguese. So, they asked me why I was asking questions about the music instruction and not language.

  “I am just starting with music. I have some questions for the language classes too.”

  Instruments were expensive. I wanted to find out if this was a serious school. I had a little cousin who studied music; she chose the violin. Also, my brother Jean-Claude had been learning to play the drums. I knew how difficult it was.

  I wanted to ask my questions concerning the language classes, but they refused. They said that they wanted to let others pose their questions. That was dubious because no one else was signalling the intent to ask a question.

  Another Haitian raised his hand tentatively. He said, “To follow up the questions that my colleague was asking … for language, in particular. You say that all of the courses will last the same length of time: three months. Because it is not possible to learn a language in three months, what method will you be using to teach the children to speak Portuguese? Languages cannot be taught without textbooks, especially a dictionary. We don’t have the ability to buy these things. Even if we could afford them, it is hard to find them in our bookstores. In fact, it is hard to find a bookstore. Are you going to help us to find these materials to help propagate your language, Portuguese, in Haiti?”

  He had learned from their treatment of me to ask a number of questions at once. His questions seemed to place the four feet of the two soldiers in one box. They looked at each other, the ceiling, the walls, the floor — everywhere except the eyes of the starving Haitians before them.

  Finally, they were obliged to respond, “Your question is very important. You can’t learn a language without textbooks any more than a soldier can go to war without a rifle.… After we start the classes, we will be able to see what resources might be available.”

  In other words, they had no idea what they were doing. Or maybe whatever they were planning wasn’t what they were telling us.

  All of this question-and-answer session was taking place in French, rather than our language: Creole. Most Haitians are uncomfortable in French, the language of our colonial masters. The female soldier was translating between French and Portuguese, the language of the soldiers.

  While the female soldier was speaking, the other went to the table filled with plates of food. We Haitians watched with anticipation, no longer interested in what they were going to teach or how. Now, a much greater question pushed every other into irrelevance: what were we going to eat? What was the soldier going to collect from the table for us? Each large Haitian eye followed his every movement. They had memorized everything that was on that table. Each Haitian was preparing his or her own feast, choosing a chicken leg from one plate, savoury rice from another, vegetables of every colour and juicy texture. Then, they poured themselves a huge tumbler of fresh fruit juice trickling over a chunk of ice.

  While they salivated, the soldier returned with a platter of little round cookies, inferior to those we buy from the street merchants. They were tiny, flavourless, and without any nutritive value. We poor Haitians would never serve such biscuits to our guests. We would be ashamed.

  The soldier handed the platter to a Haitian in the front row who was supposed to serve himself and then pass it along. Then, the same soldier went back to the table and returned with another platter full of tiny plastic cups of orange juice. It wasn’t natural juice. It tasted like chemicals were killing the orange. Anyway, after one gulp, the cup was empty. It couldn’t have done too much damage.

  When the soldier offered the platter to the hungriest of the Haitians among us, they looked at the cups, then at him, and declined his offer. The educational program and the food were the same: artificial, parsimonious, and unsatisfying.

  Our feast was over. We were hungrier than when we arrived.

  Next, the soldiers returned with the packets for the children. They gave each supervisor the kit
s to distribute to the kids in his or her group. The white plastic bags were marked “UNICEF.” Inside were a ruler, a pen, a pencil and pencil sharpener, an eraser, and a small notebook. Everything was labelled UNICEF.

  When everyone had the kits to distribute to the kids, the soldiers gave us the schedule for each discipline. With lots and lots of blan smiles, they showed us to the door. We left without understanding the motives behind MINUSTAH’s sudden interest in the lives of us poor Haitians.

  chapter thirty-four

  IT WAS A TUESDAY IN OCTOBER, the day before before my kids would be going to MINUSTAH for the first time. I went down to Dad’s place in Simon, to motivate my five students and also to find out how things had gone for the music group. My cousin Junette and my little brother Jean-Claude were both in the music group. Jean-Claude had chosen the drums and Junette, the violin.

  I was talking with Deland as James arrived. James, in his role as leader, had spent the afternoon at MINUSTAH to see how the music session had gone. He handed me a t-shirt that MINUSTAH had provided as a uniform for all participants in the program, students and supervisors. It identified us all as accomplices of the enemy: “MINISTÉRIO DO ESPORTE” was written in bold black letters above a colourful “BRASIL.” Below that was written, “UM PAIS DE TODOS” and finally, “GOUVERNO FEDERAL.” On the back of the shirt, against a white background, was written “BRASIL” in bold letters.

  As soon as he gave me the t-shirt, I wondered if I would be a marked man in Simon. But the MINUSTAH troops had not given us t-shirts that identified us as complicit with them. Instead, the shirts aligned us with Brazil. Brazil was not MINUSTAH, even if it had accepted the role of lead nation in the United Nations’ force. Haitians were much more interested in Brazil as a soccer nation. Haitians are divided in their support for Argentina and Brazil, the two Latin American soccer powers. However, the Brazilians were not here in Haiti to play soccer. Maybe it was the subtext that was most important: “Brasil: um pais de todos” — Brazil: a country of everything. But it was not really honest to trade on Brazil’s soccer image to promote the military occupation of Haiti. Soccer players had nothing to do with MINUSTAH. They don’t carry guns. They don’t fire on kids. Perhaps the Brazilian soldiers were ashamed of the reality of their actions, so they wanted instead to highlight their love of sport.