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

by Vilmond Joegodson Déralciné

  We had just arrived on the square when I saw that one of the little boys appeared anxious. I went to him to see what was wrong. Normally, Haitians relieve their bladders in the open. The fact that there are no public toilets makes this a necessity and everyone accepts it. Here, inside the MINUSTAH base, the boy sensed that the same Haitian rules didn’t apply. But neither did he know what to do. And so he became frightened. I went to a soldier and asked where the little boy might pee-pee. The soldier asked how many kids needed to pee-pee. The sixty kids said they all needed to go. Either they all actually did or else they didn’t want to miss the chance to see a MINUSTAH toilet.

  The soldier showed them the way. All the kids ran, each wanting to get to the toilets first so that they would not have to wait in line. The officer in charge watched in shock. Suddenly, he worried that his well-behaved little Haitians could be undone by a simple call of nature. The officer spoke to the interpreter who called to the children for order. “Don’t you remember what the officer told you back in Simon? Behave yourselves! Calm down! Slowly!”

  When the boys arrived at their toilets, another soldier pointed them to the urinals. They made two lines, but only one boy was allowed to use the urinal at a time. The others waited their turn to shoot themselves towards the urinal. After everyone had relieved himself, we joined the girls, who had returned from their toilet, to continue the rehearsal. We met three Haitians who worked inside the military base as interpreters and spies. Their job was to help MINUSTAH find their targets and to explain the local terrain for them. These three would join the officer and the kokorat as the core of the chorus. They were paid by MINUSTAH and had already demonstrated their loyalty to their paycheques. The officer, clearly, wanted to be surrounded by people that posed no threat.

  It was getting late. When we returned to rehearse the song in the place where we would be presenting it, we shared the square with thousands of MINUSTAH soldiers going through their drills. They too were rehearsing for the ceremony that would take place the following week.

  We were occupying the part of the square where we would be singing. It was in front of where the dignitaries would be sitting. The soldiers carried out their drills imagining that they were presenting themselves to those officials from the United Nations and “the great nations.” As a result, they seemed today to be performing for us, the little group of little Haitians singing “We Are the World.”

  Groups of soldiers followed geometric patterns, coming together and separating according to a logic that only they understood. We started to feel dizzy watching them. As their drill proceeded, they marched along in a never-ending row about a dozen soldiers wide. Their feet raised and fell in unison, like a nasty millipede. From time to time, they turned abruptly and in unison to stare at us in defiance, all traces of friendliness absent. Their faces were dangerously blank. But it was hard, for all the seriousness they intended to project, to not see them as little plastic soldiers being manipulated by some ill-willed child. They slammed their feet on the asphalt with such force that we felt the earth move under us.

  I thought of Dessalines sleeping below them. Two hundred years earlier, he had declared that Haitian soil was for Haitians. Could he hear this assault on his beloved country? It was as if each marching step was a new challenge to Dessalines, reminding him that Haiti did not belong to Haitians. And the violence of the marching, the intense pounding of the ground, told Dessalines that not only was his country occupied, but the occupiers would treat it in any way they chose.

  The strange thing was that this great march past, in perfect unison and organized violence, seemed to be directed at us little Haitians, dwarfed by the size of the space. Our little song, a sentimental ode to world peace and unity, was completely drowned out by the feet smashing Dessalines’s soil.

  Was there, among these thousands of foreign soldiers, one who knew even the name of Dessalines? What brought them from their own poor countries to our Haiti? If they knew history, they would have been ashamed to treat our soil like this. They would be quietly and cautiously placing each foot on the ground so as not to dishonour Dessalines and his descendants. Instead, they were staring at us in ignorant defiance.

  We were mesmerized by the marching soldiers when the officer brought us back to our rehearsal. He saw that we were discouraged. It was time for us to go home. We were not used to staying out so late. The parents of the children would be worrying. I felt ashamed when Annie called me to ask if I was close to home. I had to tell her I hadn’t even left Tabarre! I lied that we were nearly finished, but in fact I didn’t know what MINUSTAH had planned and I felt out of control. I should have told the officer that the hour was late and that the children should be returning home. But I didn’t. There seemed to be no place for my own will in this big enterprise, no way to represent the real needs of the Haitian children.

  It was nine o’clock in the evening when the officer called us to enter the dining hall. It appeared that most of the soldiers had finished. Some units were still eating. They put us on the opposite side of the dining hall. On those tables, there remained what other soldiers had left behind. We supervisors did not want to reveal our hunger. We thought it would be humiliating. But the children had no such inhibition. They were starving and they didn’t care who knew it. They ravaged the tables, looking for whatever the overfed soldiers had left behind. They wanted to go to the tables that were still full of plates of food to eat, where the soldiers were sitting. I wonder if anyone in MINUSTAH asked themselves when was the last time that the children might have eaten. Did they assume that all of the children had eaten today? Did they care?

  We were important enough that they had promised us medals, but they allowed us to eat only their left-overs.

  No one could have controlled those kids. A couple of the supervisors made the mistake of trying to stop their kids from their frenzied feeding. One child set the tone by biting the hand of his supervisor when he tried to slow the kid down. We simply sat back and gave them full rein. The alternative was civil war.

  The soldiers still eating in another part of the hall were transfixed by the scene. They stared wide-eyed, forks and spoons suspended before their opened mouths, as the children turned their dining hall upside down.

  As the soldiers told us to hurry up, the children entered into an absolute frenzy. I saw one child devouring the powder used to make coffee. There was a basket of apples on each table. Perhaps MINUSTAH thought that the little children would never be able to eat them all. But, it was a miscalculation. The children were not about to leave something edible inside Tabarre. They tucked their t-shirts into their pants to make a sack. Then they filled the space between their skin and the t-shirt with apples.

  The MINUSTAH soldiers were suddenly motivated to get the kids out of the base and back to Simon. The officer and another soldier stood at the door to exit the children two by two. The soldiers forced the children who had filled their t-shirt sacks with apples to empty them before they left the dining room. They said that each child could leave with one apple, no more. I don’t think the soldiers understood the repercussions of that decision. The food would remain behind, in this country called MINUSTAH inside of Haiti, but guarded by armed soldiers. Now the kids knew for sure what those arms were protecting.

  The kids filed into the buses in utter dejection to return to the base in Simon. It was nine-thirty when we left the base in Tabarre; the streets were almost empty. Without traffic, we made good time. As usual, there was still much activity in Simon. By candlelight, the merchants were still selling and their clients were still buying. We got the kids out of the base and to their parents.

  I asked the driver who was returning to Tabarre if he would drop me off in Delmas 33. He agreed. I was now the only Haitian in the MINUSTAH bus with the soldiers. I was frightened. I did not want to be seen. I feared that someone might see me exiting the bus in Delmas 33. It could be a disaster. I would be taken as an accomplice, a spy. When we arrived in my neighbourhood, I descended from
the bus and thanked them. I separated myself from them and flew through the alleyways to get home. There were a thousand dangers in being out at that time in Delmas 33. I just wanted to be in my room with Annie. Before long, that’s where I was. Fortunately, Annie was fast asleep and so, by the next morning, her anger at my tardiness had lost its sting.

  chapter thirty-nine

  THE ELECTION HAD TAKEN PLACE on Sunday and the results were uncertain since all the candidates wanted to be winners. The population didn’t know yet who would be president. In principle, the population that votes should be the first to know whom they have chosen. But it was clear that the ballots had been a formality. The powerful were clumsily deciding whom to declare the winner.

  The results of the election were announced on the same day that MINUSTAH had scheduled the ceremony. The people were making their anger and disgust known all over Port-au-Prince. We had electricity that day. I was at home with Annie watching the protests on our little television when Ansel Herz, an American journalist, called me. He asked if I would join him at one of the protests to discuss what was happening. I agreed to meet him in Delmas 30, where a large group of people was heading toward the headquarters of the Electoral Council.

  I arrived and looked for the journalist. Meanwhile, I followed the protesters on their mission. Among them were a number of presidential candidates. I walked along at the side. Sometimes, these protests turn violent and I didn’t want to be in the centre. The people were angry and anything might have happened. They wanted to send some messages to those responsible for the farce of the elections. Many knew that the Electoral Council and the government were controlled by powerful interests hiding behind the United Nations, and so they had a hard time choosing a target for their anger. In fact, the machinations of the powerful are so devious that people often take intermediaries as the source of their troubles. They are just sell-outs. Moreover, it’s not clear that the protesters actually have more courage than the sell-outs they protest. In any case, rocks register the message that something is rotten.

  When they reached the Electoral Council building, the gates were closed. Sometimes the protesters were more or less calm. Other times, a wave of anger and frustration overcame them and they would throw rocks at the building and push against the gate to enter the grounds. The leader of the protest was standing in the back of a colourful vehicle using a loudspeaker to calm the crowd.

  He spoke to the members of Electoral Council who were noticeably absent. “You see the violence of these people! This is just the beginning. The real army is amassing all over the country. If you make the wrong choice, you will see their power! If you want calm, do not be guided by the government or the United Nations. Do your job! … Okay, that is all.”

  Perhaps for the leader, that was all; but the people had not yet begun. They wanted to vent their anger. There were some policemen whose job was to ensure that the protest not get out of hand. Some of the protesters who wanted to heat the protest up started to throw rocks at the policemen. Those who did not want to participate in violence dispersed in all directions. Only the fighters remained. The police tried to corner them. Those who had dispersed remained at a safe distance to watch the fight between the police and the violent protesters.

  I kept a discrete distance, taking the side of neither the protesters nor the police. I didn’t want to be a candidate for the protesters’ rocks or the policemen’s batons. The protesters began to construct barricades on the road to keep the police at a distance. They used the carts that the street vendors always leave behind. They piled the used tires that you can find on the side of the road anywhere in Port-a-Prince and set them on fire. They fed the fires with the garbage that is always at hand in the capital.

  The protesters saw a United Nations SUV approaching. The UN personnel had probably been unaware of the protest growing in front of the Electoral Council headquarters. Nevertheless, it continued to advance at a more cautious pace. One of the protesters saw the vehicle approaching. He hid himself from the view of the driver with a big concrete block suspended above his head, hoping that the SUV would not veer from its route that was leading it directly into his trap. His luck held and, when it passed by him, he suddenly appeared and smashed his block flush on the roof of the SUV with all his force.

  The SUV’s windshields were tinted black so that it was impossible to see who was inside. It didn’t matter for the protesters. The actual people who filled the positions for the United Nations were no more important for them than were the Haitians for the MINUSTAH authorities. The vehicle seemed to have its own inherent instinct for survival, in the absence of any apparent human direction. It bounced and then recoiled under the force of the concrete block. Then it searched for an escape route, moving desperately in a snakelike pattern. However, other protesters had seen it weaken and began to corral their prey.

  The SUV swerved in one direction in order to distance itself from the man who had smashed its roof, but that diversion only served to make it visible to others who had not noticed the gift sent from heaven. They ran over from different directions, arming themselves with the biggest rocks they could find, to participate in the chase. Each time that the SUV swerved to avoid one group, it placed itself directly in the line of fire of another. It was panicking under the assault and the protesters were profiting. The SUV appeared to lift itself up and run away on its wheels.

  I was increasingly concerned as I watched the SUV struggle to escape. I knew that there were real human beings inside even if they never wanted to reveal themselves behind the tinted windshields. I worried about what would happen if they could not get away. I knew the crowd. I knew its fury. I supposed that the SUV was headed for the ceremony in Tabarre. Of course, I had to get there myself and was running out of time because of this diversion to follow the protest. Under the circumstances, it didn’t seem the right moment to ask the UN officials for a lift.

  After it had fled and was out of danger, the protesters changed in their attitude towards the Haitian National Police that they had been fighting up until then. In their eyes, the real enemy had appeared and taken its rightful place in the protest. The pressure was off the Haitian police who were, after all, Haitians. The problem was the UN.

  Perhaps the SUV had called for reinforcements. In the distance, we could see a couple of MINUSTAH jeeps that are used for carrying soldiers. They seemed to be trying to gauge the situation from afar. The protesters wanted to entice them to come closer. They started to walk calmly, as though they were out for a Sunday stroll, with not a malevolent intention among them, hoping to sucker the jeeps into a trap.

  When the protesters were closing in, five well-armed soldiers jumped out of the back of each MINUSTAH jeep. They trained their rifles on the protesters. While the protesters continued on their way, under the menace of the soldiers’ rifles, one decided to provoke a showdown. He picked up a healthy-sized rock and threw it at the soldiers. They prepared to fire. The other protesters responded by throwing rocks wholesale, singing, Si yo tire sou nou, n’ap mete dife — if they fire upon us, we’ll start a fire.

  It might have been wiser for MINUSTAH to teach its soldiers how to speak Creole instead of offering Portuguese lessons to Haitian children. For Haitians were never likely to chant Portuguese slogans during their protests. In any case, the soldiers understood the intentions of the protesters whatever language they were speaking and no matter what they were saying. The rocks spoke for themselves.

  In response, one of the MINUSTAH soldiers fired teargas into the crowd of Haitians. I could see the exasperation in the eyes of the other soldiers. They were thinking, “What idiot fired teargas?! Is he trying to get us killed?”

  But the protesters did not see that. They took up the volley of teargas as a declaration of war. They were happy to participate. From the distance, a mass of protesters ran all out to arrive at the fight before it was over. This cavalry, pouring down the hill, armed with rocks from the rubble that was everywhere, chilled the blood of the MINUS
TAH troops, who scurried back into the jeeps. As they waited their turn to enter, each protected himself from the rocks with a plastic shield. But the Haitians were throwing big rocks with all their force. The plastic shields were not equal to the challenge. The people would not be stopped by plastic shields. Teargas was only an accelerant for the violence. The best option was a full retreat. The jeep driver hit the gas and burned rubber before all the soldiers had entered. It was now every man for himself. The MINUSTAH soldiers saw that their jeep was leaving with or without them. The quick-witted ones jumped aboard and held on to anything. One was not so lucky. He turned to see his buddies leaving him to the mercy of the crowd. He ran like the wind. A friend hollered to the driver to slow down. He obliged just enough for the straggler to catch up to the jeep, Haitians hot on his heels. He launched himself toward the jeep and grabbed onto a part of the frame. The jeep did not do him any favours. It sped up, dragging the poor soldier on the ground behind.

  This small comedy defused the situation. Even the protesters who were chasing their prey started to laugh at the panic of the MINUSTAH soldiers. They threw their rocks with less force. Once the jeep was at a safe distance, the driver stopped for precisely the time it took to grab the soldier dragging along the ground and pull him aboard.

  I was relieved. I had watched the little drama with increasing concern for the MINUSTAH troops. I was at least glad that the young soldier was well, even if his heart had had a good workout that day.

  I was now running late to get to the MINUSTAH base in Tabarre for the great ceremony. I took a taptap to Simon to pick up my kids. On the way, I wondered how we Haitians would be received today in Tabarre. The MINUSTAH officials might be second-guessing their choice of “We Are the World” to mark the ceremony. I imagined the officer strumming his guitar and writing the lyrics for “Haitians Are Ungrateful Bastards” to sing before the United Nations’ officials. Today, it was clear, was not a day for reflection. If MINUSTAH were to let the Haitians out of the Tabarre base alive, then maybe I would have time to reflect on these events sometime in the future.