[Peace-discuss] Fighting Slavery in Haiti: One Survivor's Story

[Ricky Baldwin]

Thanks for this, Bob -

We've talked before about how closely connected are the two first modern republics in this hemisphere (the US and Haiti), one a slave state and one a state of rebellious slaves.  Of course today's connections are close, too - down to where our kids' pajamas are made, not to mention numerous invasions and coups over debts and allocation of resources, etc.  One of them is that both countries actually still have slaves, as brutal and ugly as it ever was.
 
Thanks again.

Ricky Baldwin

"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn

--- On Thu, 7/30/09, Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fighting Slavery in Haiti: One Survivor's Story
To: "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 7:24 AM


What Are You Waiting For?

A Former Slave Fights Slavery

Helia Lajeunesse

Port-au-Prince, Haiti


Recorded and Edited by Beverly Bell

July 2009


        Today there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world,
more than at any time in history, even including during the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. In many cases, the slave systems are
facilitated by the spike in global trade in a quest for global
profits. Though that trade is often called free, what is in fact
‘free’ is the movement of the captives across borders – ‘free’ as in
easy - and their labor – ‘free’ as in unpaid.

              Other forms of slavery have endured for a long time,
often called by euphemistic names and considered socially acceptable.
One of these is in Haiti, ironically the only nation ever to host a
successful slave revolution. Roughly 300,000 children suffer miserably
in forced servitude in a system known as restavèk, literally “to stay
with.” As Helia Lajeunesse describes here, a group of former restavèk
is now naming the system for what it is and raising opposition to it.
Helia is among them.

      Beyond a human rights struggle, we view this survivor-led
campaign as part of protecting the global commons. The global commons
is the expansive concept that life, public spaces, basic services,
cultural traditions, and natural resources must be kept outside of the
market and cherished for the well-being of humanity and the planet.
The multi-faceted initiatives for people’s control over their own
bodies and lives also includes opposing the sale of Native American
genetic information to marketers, the black market of kidney sales,
pharmaceutical testing on the poor, and other commercialization of
human life.  The goal is a world where life, dignity, rights,
equality, human relationships, and the earth’s riches trump profit.


      The restavèk system is modern slavery.  When a family takes in a
restavèk to live with them, they stop doing any work in the house. The
restavèk child has to do everything. If the child doesn’t work hard
enough, they beat them. The child can’t eat with the family, and
usually doesn’t even eat the same food – just scraps. The child sleeps
on the floor, often in the kitchen. They don’t pay the child, just
give them a little food. They never used to send the children to
school. The family views that child as an animal, but that’s false:
that child has the same rights as their own.

      It’s such a horrible system, and it’s due to the economic
situation of the country.  You might have a family that has a lot of
kids; that family can’t afford to give the child even food, so they
send him or her to the home of someone else in the hopes that that
person can provide better care. Let me give you an example from my own
life: I had five children.  They lost their father.  I couldn’t feed
them. I was obliged to give four away, even though the youngest was
only three years old. I only kept one who wasn’t even a year old then.

      When I went to Washington recently on a tour to talk about
restavèk, what made me so sad was to go to a museum that had an
exhibit on slavery.  I learned about people who had been in slavery in
the U.S.  I saw a picture of a woman with a hoe, a basket under her
elbow, and a rope around her waist. That’s how my life had been as a
restavèk. It made me cry.

      Here’s my story. My mother died when I was seven months old.  I
went to live with my grandmother, but she died when I was five. My
relatives didn’t have the means to care for me, so they gave me to
someone. I went to live at that person’s house as a restavèk.  I was
the one who got up first and went to bed last.  Whatever work had to
happen there, I was the one to do it.  I got up at 4:00 to make the
fire and cook the food, I was the one who had to go get the water and
carry it back up the mountain on my head.  They didn’t give me any
food from what they ate; I had to go out into the street and scrounge
around to get my own food.  At 12:00 when school let out, even though
their children were older than me, I had to go get them from school.
They used to beat me on the head.

      The neighbor saw what was happening and arranged to give me to
someone else.  So I went to the home of another person, but I actually
suffered worse than before.  She abused me terribly.

      She had a child who was going to school.  I had to carry that
child’s food on my head into town to give it to her at school.  One
day when I was coming home from doing that, there was a man who was
holding a school under a coconut tree.  He said, “Helia, come be part
of this school.” I said, “No, I can’t, because when I go home my aunt
will beat me.”  He said, “You should come.”  I went.  Now when I went
home, I said, “There was a man holding a school, so I attended today.”
She said, “What? You went to school?”  I said, “Yes, and could you
please give me a little pencil and a notebook?”  She asked me what I
thought I was doing, and started beating me. A neighbor was watching
and she said, “If you beat that child, we’ll burn your house down.”  I
didn’t have anywhere else to go, though, so I had to keep living
there.

      The next time the woman beat me, I found a food vendor who had a
little street restaurant who took me in. She started off really nice
with me.  But when she finished selling her food, I was the one who
had to wash all the dishes.  Until I finished washing all of them, I
couldn’t go to sleep.  And she didn’t give me food, just a little
fried dough. But I had to stay with her because I didn’t have any
family who could help me.

      Things were so bad for me. When I was nine years old, I went to
a fourth house.  I had to pick up the child at noon when school let
out.  One day the child fell down, and when I went to the school I
found that she had hurt her knee.  When I went home I told her mother
that.  The mother called the police to come arrest me, and I spent a
day in the police station. Everyone said to her, “This is just a
child.  Your daughter fell down.  You shouldn’t do that to this girl.”
So she came to free me. I said to myself, “One day my life is going to
change.”  Despite that, though, I kept on suffering misery.

      When I was twelve, I went to a place called Fort Cochon, a place
far away where I didn’t know anyone.  I worked in the fields for
people who would give me a little food. The work I was doing was
picking coffee. I got paid with a little can of coffee and a little
food. That’s what I did to survive.  I also did labor in the house of
a person there. If she needed me to fetch water, I fetched water. If
she needed washing done, I did the washing.  I didn’t have anywhere
else to stay, so even though that person mistreated me, I had to stay
with her. Misery was killing me.

      A young man started liking me.  But the parents of the young man
didn’t want him to be with me because they said, “You don’t know her
family.”  But the man was a person of good faith and he put me with
his older brother in Port-au-Prince.  I did his washing and his
cooking. But I got pregnant with the young man, and the mother threw
me out.  I had nowhere to live.  Then my husband called another
brother, and that brother said, “You are such a good person, I can’t
let you suffer like this.” He brought me to Port-au-Prince. My husband
and I stayed with him in Martissant and I had my baby.  Then he gave
me a second baby. My husband did a little work for someone who gave us
a little house to stay in.  But we were living in such poverty.

      Poverty and misery had made me not know how to read and write,
or count in my head. At that time, even though I was a grown-up, even
though I had two children, I went to school.  Even though I didn’t get
to go far, still I can write my name.

      In 2004, after the departure of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a gang
of men broke into my house.  They raped me and my oldest daughter.  My
husband tried to protest and they took him away; we’ve never seen him
again.  My daughter got pregnant, so then I had a grandchild from
rape. I was raising five children and a grandchild all by myself.

      That’s when I found KOFAVIV, the Commission of Women
Victim-to-Victim. It’s made up of about 5,000 women, both those who’ve
been raped and those who were restavèk.  They supported me and
embraced me and didn’t let me go.  They got me health care, got me
tested for HIV-AIDS, and found a psychologist who could talk with me.
They also got me to be part of a reflection circle, which is sharing
about what you’re suffering with a group of women and learning how to
move forward. Only then did I learn that my life wasn’t over, because
you know I hadn’t had any place in society. With KOFAVIV I never got
discouraged.

      But even though my life got a little better, I still suffer so
much because my son and my daughter are not with me. The reason is
that the person who killed their father is close by, and they say they
don’t want to come to the neighborhood where I live.  As long as that
man is around, they’re scared he can come back for them. So my
18-year-old daughter is still living as a restavèk.  That hurts my
heart so much. Here I am struggling against the system, but I still
have a child who is in it. I can’t live in peace.  I cry thinking
about the fact that my daughter is a restavèk, because I know that
family isn’t treating her well. They haven’t even put her in school.

      I’m struggling to end slavery in Haiti because I know how I
suffered. I’ve allied myself with KOFAVIV.  Even though my life hasn’t
changed 100%, it’s not the same way it was.  Now I can advocate for
people, I can travel to the U.S. to stand up in front of crowds of
people and speak.

      We do a lot of things in KOFAVIV.  We talk to the press and
radio about our work. On May 31 we held a march in Port-au-Prince with
thousands of people. We wore T-shirts that said, “I’m against the
restavèk system. And you, what are you waiting for?”  We did theatre
in the street, the press was there, everyone saw it. It was beautiful.
We gave flyers with the same message to everyone who passed on foot
and in cars.

      Another thing we do is raise the level of consciousness of
people who keep restavèk children. But I have to tell you: it’s not
just families who have restavèk, people treat their own children this
way.  We do theater with them, tell them stories and jokes, try to
create a relaxed ambiance.  We help them understand that when someone
lives in their house, they shouldn’t view her or him as a restavèk.
That person is a child.  You don’t know what that child can do for you
tomorrow. Make their life easy. Send them to school, give them
information.  Look on that child as though it’s your own child.

      We also help parents in the countryside who think they’re doing
their child a favor by sending them to go live with a family in town.
They think the child is fine.  We encourage them to do whatever is
within their means to keep their child with them and not give them
away into servitude.

      We’re working with victims, women who were restavèk, to help
them reestablish their lives. We also embrace children who are
restavèk today to help them not get discouraged by life. We also have
a school that we’ve established in Martissant called La Modestie
Parents in Difficulty Committee.  There are a lot of children who
don’t have a mother or father – there were so many people killed
during the coup d’etat of 2004 that now there are endless children in
this category - and who were raised as restavèk, who can now go study.
We have a group of fifty youth and do professional training with
them.  We can’t do more because of the lack of means.

      We’re also getting neighbors to know they have a responsibility,
too. We encourage people, when they know a family is mistreating a
child, to try to go talk with them. We say, “If you hear someone
beating a child in their home, here’s what you should do. Go knock on
the door and talk to the person, tell them to stop beating the child.
Tell them that this is a human being and you need to treat them well.”
If you go talk a first time and a second time and nothing changes,
the third time you can take another level of action, go talk to the
police or the social welfare office. When we can’t confront the person
directly because we’re worried about what will happen to the child as
a result, we put a tape recorder outside the violator’s window to
record them beating the child. Then we take that tape to the radio
station. The family hears it on the radio and gets ashamed, and
hopefully gets a different level of understanding about its treatment
of the child.

      We see a lot of response from our work. I don’t say that
everyone is becoming aware 100% of how wrong this slavery is, and
we’re only in Port-au-Prince; we need it to change out in the
countryside, too. But still we are seeing people changing the way
they’re treating the children who are living with them, or their own
children.  For example, there was a woman who used to beat the
restavèk child a lot. We invited her to the march. She brought her
husband and the child who was living with her. That child used to
sleep on a piece of cardboard in a kitchen.  Even though the woman
didn’t give the child a bed, at least now the girl has somewhere clean
to lie down.  And now they send the child to see her own family in
Jacmel; they didn’t used to do that.  The girl is going to school,
too. We asked her, “How is your aunt treating you?” She said, “She
doesn’t beat me anymore. She even plays with me.”

      I feel that this slavery will end. It’s an enormous struggle.
But just like I’ve learned and am speaking out, everyone will become
aware that this system has to end.  We need people to stand up for
this, not just in KOFAVIV but in the U.S., too.  I ask everyone to
lend their participation, whether it’s through their courage or their
ideas, to help this struggle advance and to stand strong in the work
we’re doing.

      We’re going to continue struggling to do away with this system
completely. I can’t say how soon this will happen, but it will. That’s
certain.

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