Servitude
steals childhoods in Haiti
BY GARY MARX
Chicago Tribune
 PORT-AU-PRINCE,
Haiti - (KRT) - Each morning, 13-year-old Claudia Lundi wakes at 4 and begins
cooking, sweeping, fetching water and doing other household chores that last until
well after sunset.
She
sleeps on the concrete floor cushioned by a pile of clothing and eats sparingly,
alone, in the kitchen. "If
I don't finish my work they will beat me up," said Lundi, picking nervously at
her fingernails. "They beat me with a whip all over my body." (
Art Work by Kathy Castera- La Joie De Vivre ( Joy of Living) Born
in the southwestern city of Jeremie, Haiti, Lundi has been working as a servant
for five years. She is one of tens of thousands of Haitian children sent by their
impoverished parents to work in the homes of relatives or strangers for nothing
but room and board. Known
in Haiti as "restaveks," from the French phrase "rester avec" - to stay with _children
in such conditions are growing in number as Haiti's crisis deepens 15 months after
the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to social workers and
experts. As
heavily armed pro-Aristide gangs battle United Nations peacekeeping forces and
threaten elections scheduled for the fall, there are few signs of progress in
the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. Foreign
donors have yet to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in promised assistance.
Massive work projects to clean irrigation ditches and repair schools remain on
the drawing board in a country where most residents earn less than a dollar a
day. With
too many mouths to feed, many rural Haitians dispatch their children - mostly
girls - to families in Port-au-Prince that are only slightly better off, unknowingly
consigning those as young as 5 to a life of labor and abuse. Most
restaveks never attend school and suffer malnourishment. They carry emotional
scars from being beaten with electrical cords, leather belts and other objects.
Some children are sexually abused. "I
wake up in the middle of the night and the kids are screaming," said Father Pierre
St. Vistal, who runs a shelter for 60 former restaveks in the Port-au-Prince slum
of Cite de Dieu, or City of God. "Sometimes
they scream because they are scared of people coming back to fetch them," he said.
"They also scream because they miss their parents." Lundi
and other restaveks say they would like to return to their parents, but don't
have money for bus fare or have been away so long they don't know how to get home. Natasha
Jeune, a 13-year-old restavek from the central plateau town of Mirebalais, said
she doesn't recall the last time she saw her parents. A relative picked her up
and took Jeune to live with a family in Port-au-Prince when Jeune was about 5
years old. Her
eyes cast downward, Jeune described a typical, 16-hour workday in which she does
everything from serving food to washing clothes to emptying containers full of
excrement to lugging water to the house. "Sometimes
when I carry a bucket of water, it's too heavy and I fall and the bucket breaks,"
Jeune said in a soft voice. "They beat me up." Jeune
said she is only fed once a day and is forced to eat on the floor. Unlike her
host family members who sleep on beds, Jeune spends the night on the ground wrapped
in a thin bedspread. "Life
should not be like this, but I have no choice," said Jeune. "I would like to go
somewhere else and have a normal childhood." Many
restaveks who flee servitude end up among the hordes of street children working
odd jobs or begging and stealing to survive. One of them is Junior Delusa, a 17-year-old
who lives in the Champs de Mars area adjacent to Haiti's gleaming National Palace. Delusa
said he prefers life on the streets to life as a restavek, where his host family
was verbally abusive. "They
started humiliating me," said Delusa, who washes cars at a crowded downtown intersection.
"They said, `Don't you see who you are? You are just a restavek.' Life was unbearable." Jean-Yves
Georges, director general of Haiti's Ministry of Social Affairs, said the government
is carrying out a radio and television campaign to educate Haitians against using
restaveks. Yet,
he said the practice would likely continue as long as Haiti is desperately poor. Some
experts attribute the mistreatment of restaveks to the widespread acceptance of
corporal punishment in Haiti, along with the fact that Haitian children often
are treated as second-class citizens. Critics
also say the Haitian government has failed to enforce a law passed in 2001 that
prohibits the inhumane treatment of children. "What's
the purpose of a law outlawing unpaid domestic servants if the practice continues
and if they are subject to abuse?" asked Luz Angela Melo, administrator of UNICEF's
protection program in Haiti. "It doesn't provide any real solution." UNICEF
estimates there are 173,000 restaveks in Haiti, though Melo cautioned that accurate
figures are difficult to find because it's a hidden phenomenon. Experts
say the origins of unpaid child domestic labor date to the late 19th Century,
when Haitians began migrating from the countryside to Port-au-Prince seeking a
better life. Some
children found work among wealthy families, where they lived with their employers
and developed a strong personal bond that minimized abuse. Over
time, Haiti's elite needed fewer domestic workers as refrigerators and other household
appliances became more common. Restaveks began working for middle-class families
and, increasingly, for the poor. Today,
most restaveks end up with families in Cite Soleil, La Saline and other Port-au-Prince
shantytowns characterized by flimsy tin and plywood shacks, rivulets of raw sewage
and violent street gangs. "Peasant
parents have the false notion that if you live in the city, you are better off,"
said Jean Lherisson, a restavek expert and director of the non-profit group Haiti
Solidarity International. "The
truth is that these are people as miserable from an economic point of view as
the parents of the kids," he said. While
the Haitian government lacks the resources to help restaveks, a handful of private
groups are providing a small number of them with shelter, food and schooling. Lundi
and Jeune are among 300 restaveks who spend a few hours each day at the Maurice
Sixto shelter, a Swiss-funded refuge in Port-au-Prince's sprawling Carrefour neighborhood. Marie
Pasal Douyan, a social worker at the shelter, said many of the children are alternatively
aggressive and withdrawn after years of neglect and abuse. "They
feel lost and abandoned," she said. Yet,
some parents say they have no choice but to give up their children. Sitting
alone in a downtown park, Gracilia Alexandre said she had just dropped off her
12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter at their uncle's house unannounced because
she could no longer take care of them. Alexandre
said her husband was killed in a robbery two years ago, and she has been unable
to find a job. She expects the uncle to force the children to work for their food
and shelter. "I
don't think they are going to be treated well," said Alexandre, 26. "It was painful
for me to make that decision." --- ©
2005, Chicago Tribune. Visit
the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com Distributed
by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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