A few hours later, Junette and Jean-Claude returned from their first class.
I asked Junette, “How did the music class go?”
She grimaced. “Ah! It wasn’t serious. They didn’t have any instruments. I don’t understand what they were writing on the blackboard. Maybe they know something about music and maybe they don’t. The translator seemed to understand them. We couldn’t make sense of the translator.”
She said that the students didn’t want to continue if the classes were going to be like that. They were a waste of time.
I interjected, “Maybe if you had instruments, it would be more challenging and interesting for you.”
She said, “What instruments? They didn’t tell us that we would have instruments. All we have is benches to sit on and some explanations that no one can understand. I don’t know if the teachers understand what they are saying.”
I asked by brother, Jean-Claude, if they had at least given him some drumsticks to tap on the benches.
He said, “No. I didn’t even see a tambou. It was a waste.”
I said, “Well, maybe your course is tougher than the others. They don’t have instruments for you. Maybe they don’t have much expertise either in music or teaching.… We’ll see tomorrow how the language classes go.”
I left them alone and went to motivate the kids under my charge. I spoke to their parents. They thanked me and said that they trusted their kids with me. The kids ranged in age from ten to fourteen years old. I asked them if they were enthusiastic about the upcoming class. They said they were excited about learning Portuguese. Maybe it could be useful for them in the future. I told them that they should be well behaved. They agreed.
At home that night, I prepared for the next day. I thought of how I would treat the children during the lessons. I took my role seriously. My reputation and that of my country were important to me. I would make sure that the children held themselves with dignity. Moreover, I would learn to speak Portuguese. My Dad thought that was great: “If you learn to speak Portuguese, you can teach us afterwards.”
Walking home, I saw that people were noticing my new t-shirt. I decided that, the next morning, I would pack it in my backpack and change into it in Simon before taking the children to the school next to the military base where the classes were taking place.
The next morning, I took the kids to the school next to the MINUSTAH base. We met and joked around with the kids from the other camps who were waiting for the lessons to begin. We heard a big — and very loud — MINUSTAH vehicle arrive in the courtyard of the school. A bunch of soldiers descended with guns. They took up positions around the courtyard as if they were following a predetermined plan. The kids who had been joking together were stunned to see themselves suddenly surrounded by armed soldiers. The soldiers appeared to be there to protect the soldier-teachers from us.
Then the two soldiers whom I had met during the meeting in the military base appeared. As the female soldier-teacher prepared for the lesson, she was accompanied by a young Haitian man from Simon who had been engaged as translator. However, it was soon clear that he spoke very little Portuguese.
The female soldier-teacher began in French, “Do you know how to say hello in Portuguese?” she asked the class. “Portuguese is very similar to Spanish. In Spanish, you say Buenos Dios and in Portuguese, you say Boa Dia. And for Good Evening, you say Boa Noite.”
She had everyone repeat Boa Dia and Boa Noite a number of times. Then she asked us how we would greet someone whom we were meeting for the first time. There were, among the students, a number of kokorats. They were used to hanging out at the gates of the MINUSTAH base in Simon to beg for food and to annoy the foreign soldiers. As a result, they had learned to speak Portuguese. A couple of them jumped up to answer, “Como vocé se chama? if it is a woman. If it’s a man, Como vocé se chamo?”
The soldier-teacher forced a smile and told them they were correct. She was noticeably unenthusiastic to discover that the poorest and the dirtiest of the Haitians before her were already able to answer a question with more precision than it had been asked. I think she wanted Haitians to act like Haitians. She wanted to teach ignorant slum-dwellers. But the charm of the kokorats is that they aren’t afraid of revealing what they don’t know and what they do. They are innocent. She didn’t like them; it was clear. They couldn’t have cared less.
She had the students repeat the Portuguese greeting several times. Then she asked the students to pose any question they liked and she would translate it into Portuguese. We played that game until the session was over. It was clear that the teacher had prepared no class. If there were any grammatical rules in Portuguese, we would have to discover them on our own. This had been a parlour game, not a language class.
The class over, the soldier-teacher walked to the military vehicle and climbed aboard. Behind her, the armed soldiers mounted with their rifles drawn, surveying the courtyard as if they were a SWAT team on a deadly mission. Sixty Haitian students stood either terrified or dumbfounded until the troops drove away, invisible behind their dark-tinted windows.
After the MINUSTAH soldiers had left, some of the students went up to the kokorats. They were much more at ease with the kokorats than with the teacher-soldier. The class had whetted the appetites of the Haitians for the Portuguese language. They peppered the kokorats with questions: how would you say this, how would you say that? While the teacher-soldier had not appreciated the kokorats who illicitly understood Portuguese before the classes had begun, the Haitians wanted to exploit their knowledge.
The students who had come from the other districts wanted to know how the kokorats had learned Portuguese. The children from Simon already knew. “They are just comida. They hang out in front of the gates of the MINUSTAH base and beg. They learn Portuguese to talk to the soldiers.”
Some students wondered why they were taking a formal class when the kokorats, or comida, had obviously found a more effective strategy to learn Portuguese. Meanwhile, they surrounded the kokorats, each with a question to ask and with a hundred in reserve. However, the comida had to get back to work in front of the gates of the MINUSTAH base.
Each of the supervisors had to return the children under his or her charge to their parents. The comida came from different groups, but all of the supervisors accepted that they were a separate case. We left them to resume their posts in front of the base, or anywhere else their spirits led them, and took the more domesticated children back to their families.
chapter thirty-five
ON THE MORNING AFTER MY WEDDING, I went to Simon to thank my father for coming to my marriage.
When I arrived, I saw him sitting on a bench with an intravenous in his arm. Next to him was a neighbour who was using his sewing machine.
I thanked him for coming to my wedding and for elevating me in the eyes of Annie’s family. He said he was proud of me. And of himself for having made it.
I brought with me a piece of my wedding cake and a soft drink for him. He took the cake with two outstretched hands, as if it was sacred. When I handed it to him, he turned to his neighbour and said in a stern voice, “That is my son that God has raised in dignity. He has just married into a good family. No one would have believed it.”
He gave a piece of the cake to his neighbour, sewing next to him. “Here, take this cake. This is a special blessed cake. You should eat it with respect. This is not just some cake that a vakabon bought on the street. This is an important cake.”
When my sisters and brothers approached, he said, “I want to give it to Gloria. You others, I’m not giving you anything until you behave respectably, like your brother. You should try to follow in his footsteps.”
My two little sisters had already shamed my father by going out with vakabons. They were both pregnant and neither could (nor would) say who the father was. They would both give birth within the month. They both decided it was best to leave us. James, too, who was living in a common-law union, was out of favour.
&n
bsp; My father spoke to me, “My son, again, congratulations. Continue to live wisely and well. Now you should know that when I sent you from Simon after your mother died, I had a plan for you. I knew that this area was going downhill. I saw that people were allowing themselves to be corrupted. Especially, I wanted to get you away from David and his family of sorcerers. I knew you would have troubles with your uncle. I knew. But I also knew that if you managed to surmount the difficulties, you would be stronger. Gold has to pass through the fire a number of times before it glistens. After I die, remember that you had a father who wanted you to be a great man.”
When he said that, I was sad. He was speaking as if he would die. When he said “great” we both knew he meant “moral.”
“Be good. Be respectful of everyone, of Jelo and your uncle in Delmas 33. And your friends that advise you. Keep yourself apart from this world that can lead you to despair. Pray to God to help you nurture a forgiving heart. Make God your father, because He will never abandon you.”
He asked me to pray for his recovery. He said that, once he was well, we would look for ways to struggle for a better world together.
When he finished speaking, it was starting to get late. I said that I would encourage Annie and Mme Dieumerci to come to visit him.
A week later, Annie, her mother, and I returned to visit Deland. We brought some food with us. He started to rise. He was happy to see Mme Dieumerci. She reminded him of his own mother. They were both elderly merchant women with white hair. He had not been expecting company. He was ashamed of his broken-down house in a broken-down slum. But Mme Dieumerci was not judging him. In fact, she saw herself in the same boat. She was a poor peasant woman trying to assure the future for her children. Deland bought bread and an avocado to go along with the food that we brought. And we shared our humble feast together as one.
chapter thirty-six
ANNIE AND I WERE INSTALLED in our little room in Delmas 33. It measured three metres squared. We hadn’t been able to pay any rent yet. There was not enough room for two bodies and the three pieces of furniture that I had built to celebrate our marriage and legitimate it in the eyes of the community. I had only enough money to finish the bed and the china. The coiffure remained behind in Delmas 19. I hope to someday reclaim it, finish it, and move it to a more permanent home.
One Monday morning, Annie was awakened by a disturbing dream. The fear did not subside with the sunrise and the activity all around us. So we decided to talk about it.
As she recounted the dream, she seemed to enter into it. She shook as she told me about the images that were too vivid and frightening to confront alone.
In the dream, Annie was the main character. She was suspicious of everybody except me. In front of her were the United Nations’ troops. They were frightening. They drove enormous, impervious tanks. Which they do in reality. They were armed with huge machine guns. As they are. They dwarfed her, a defenceless, pregnant woman.
The troops were inhuman, anonymous behind dark glasses in the same manner that Duvalier’s tontons macoutes had always presented themselves. These inhuman automatons separated the men from the women at gunpoint. Annie was corralled into the group of women, unable to communicate with the Haitian men. The MINUSTAH troops marched most of the men into confinement, behind an impenetrable wall. Others they led into forced labour. Annie said that it was like the colonial days and the Haitian men appeared to be slaves. When they were working, overseen by the armed troops, it was like the corvée, or forced labour, under the American occupation of 1915–34.
Annie saw me working under the surveillance of the lethally armed MINUSTAH troops. The work was exceedingly demanding physically. In the groups of Haitians, she identified someone who was our church brother in real life. He is exceptionally tall and strong. However, this powerful man was weakened to impotence by thirst. He asked for something to drink. If he did not drink, he would die.
From the other side of the barrier with the women, Annie was trying to get my attention. She wanted to tell me that our friend was in danger for his life. But I was too busy talking to everybody. I was asking how they felt. Were they going to accept these conditions or would they revolt? I was interviewing people about their situation while someone we cared for was expiring before her eyes! Annie was unable to make contact with me as I continued to “interview” people.
Then the lustful eyes of the MINUSTAH troops turned toward the Haitian women. They advanced on Annie and the others. The women were alone, separated from the men. Annie was terrified. Alone. Vulnerable. That’s when she awoke in a sweat and fear that would not subside.
Once awake, she took stock of her actual situation. She was seven months pregnant. Her country was occupied by people with no knowledge or interest in its history. I couldn’t find a way to make a decent life. Our lives seemed to depend on the capricious self-interest of people who only saw what they could get out of us.
In the real world, our classes with MINUSTAH had been going along for three weeks. That day, we had our first hint of the motivations of MINUSTAH in organizing the courses. A different soldier arrived that day to tell us that the following week, all of the groups would unite to learn a song that most of us already knew: “We Are the World” by Michael Jackson. He told us that this would be a very serious undertaking. We would be singing this song in the main MINUSTAH base in Tabarre during a big ceremony that would take place on a Wednesday during the first week of December.
“You have to understand how big this celebration is going to be,” the officer assured us. “This ceremony has a huge importance for us. This is not just any ceremony. Do not underestimate this event where you will be singing. It is about our very presence and reputation here in Haiti.”
He continued on like that, trying to impress us with how important the event would be to him. He was so insistent that we saw that he was trying to instill fear in us. We should be in as much awe as he was in the face of this event that meant nothing to any of us.
He was an officer. He had been trained to project authority. His job was to erase doubt and to discourage questions. It was a performance that needed an audience properly conditioned. He spoke in Portuguese and a young Haitian translated his words into Creole. At least, as far as we knew.
“This is not an event for any one country. It is for the United Nations. Many great countries will be represented during this big ceremony. Certain soldiers will be honoured with medals. We will give you medals also. That is why you will learn how to sing this song well, so as not to bring shame upon Haiti. You will be representing Haiti. If you want Haiti to have a good reputation, you should remain polite and respectful.”
Of course, what he was asking us was that we show to the world the image of Haiti that his MINUSTAH troops had been sent to assure. The children would be the proof that the Haitian poor had been pacified. The rebels beaten. The resistance quashed. All that remained were quiet, docile, desperate people ready to pay homage to the great countries that he spoke of, the ones that wanted poor little Haitians to submit to their will. And, personally, he would surely take much credit for the pacification. His career would be assured along with our submission … and our misery.
“If the supervisors cannot perform their jobs, they will immediately be replaced. Any child who does not behave himself properly during the rehearsals will be expelled from the classes. We have a list of all the participants. If your name is stricken, then you will not be able to return.”
Hearing this, the students were motivated to participate. Especially when they heard that they would be awarded medals in recognition for their efforts, they lit up.
“Next week, all the groups from all of the disciplines should meet here on Tuesday at five o’clock for the rehearsal. If anyone misses even one rehearsal session, then he or she will be excluded. Absenteeism will not be tolerated.… Okay. We will end there. You should begin to think about this ceremony and decide if you will participate or not.”
I kept going over the o
fficer’s promise of medals for everyone. What kind of medals would they be giving us? As it turned out, everyone was wondering the same thing. For that was the only material benefit that we could see in this ceremony. Everything else that he said was meaningless. Moreover, after three weeks, we had all judged that the courses were a total waste of time. They were a pretext. Until now, we hadn’t know what they were a pretext for. Now, MINUSTAH was laying another card on the table. We were slowly understanding. But we also understood that this officer had put his reputation in our hands. And he was scared.
MINUSTAH and UNICEF were united in this plot to demonstrate to the world how much progress they were making among the Haitian savages. The simulacrum of education would be followed by the presentation of medals. But medals for what? Who wanted to give us medals?
The following Tuesday, I picked up the kids in Simon for the first rehearsal. We wondered if MINUSTAH would now start spending its money on the rehearsals. If this ceremony was to be as big as the commandant said, then surely there would be a significant budget. Maybe now there would be instruments and even an orchestra. Maybe, this time, we would eat. If we were to be bought off to present a calm and non-menacing image of Haiti, it would be better to feed us first.
Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun: A Memoir from the Heart of Haiti Page 27
