sun began its descent and my sneakers were soaked from the puddle that collected in our motor boat. One of the teenage boys leaned on the bow. Their ragged sail was tied to the flimsy pole that struggled to hold it. 'Why should I go on the ship, why should I trust you?' asked a dark-skinned man in his early twenties, turning up his nose as if he literally smelled something foul. I was lost for an adequate response except,
The mother wore only the bottom half of what used to be a dress, her shriveled sagging breasts dangled lifelessly against her badly scarred body. With dark spots and welts all over her back, her hair was ravaged and she spoke in delirium, a blur. 'My sister, my baby,' she muttered. Each time she tried to express herself, she was unable to add any more information to where she had left off. 'My aunt and her baby were with us on the boat, the baby became ill. She plunged in the ocean with the baby saying she could no longer stand the suffering,' explained the young man. 'She's not good in her head,' he finished.
They appeared to be badly dehydrated and said that they had not had water in three days. A colony of flies and insects buzzed around the stale vomit that floated atop the semi-flooded boat. Apparently they had been 'maroons,' on the run, for several months, living in caves, traveling underground by night, surviving on coconuts and wild berries. By the grace of people in the various towns, eventually they were able to escape. A
The father was a fisherman, his gentleness reflected in his overall demeanor. 'Do you have medicine on the ship?' inquired the fiery youth, who seemed to be reconsidering the idea of coming on board. He showed me the colony of parasites, white wormlike ones that had been eating away at his brother's scalp for the past few months. I looked at the visible rise in the puddle and as the boat dipped backwards, I quickly blurted, 'Yes.' I was getting tired, my mouth was dry, there were eighteen of them and only one of me and I didn't know how much longer I could sustain a coherent argument. The youth, who seemed to be the head negotiator, the city-slicker type, needing one final push, began to look as if he believed me, so said his eyes and his face. I looked at his Nelson Mandela T- shirt and asked how he thought the character on his shirt would handle this particular dilemma. This was the clincher. Mandela had become a universal living icon for courage, strength, persistence, and faith.
After three hours of intense creative negotiations catalyzed by the spell of an intensely beautiful set of almond-shaped eyes belonging to an eight-year-old refugee girl, I finally convinced this mistrustful family to come on board. A conspiratorial chill raced through me as I watched their craft along with all their worldly possessions set afire, a ritual that branded a mental scar on these victims and on me. It seemed a sacrilegious act for which we all would be punished.
The ocean danced and curtsied. Once again the empty ship was filled with laughter and jokes. For many, the last forty-eight hours had been a mere incident that would forever vanish into nothingness. Its effect on me, at that point, was apparent in emotions only, like the sharp pain that registers that a finger has been burned. It is not until days later, when the wounded area darkens, that the effect actually becomes visible. Astonished by the turn of events, I could only think, 'Did this really just happen? Was I partly responsible for someone's impending death?' The thought horrified me. Sitting in a corner, I reflected quietly on the faces, the stories, and the concerns, however remote, that had taken precedence over my own needs, even if only for a short time.
HAITI: A CIGARETTE BURNING AT BOTH ENDS by Marie Ketsia and Theodore-Pharel
On August 31, 1987, the last day of summer vacation, I got up early to go to Filene's Basement to shop for school clothes with my mother. I was twelve years old. We got off the T at Park Street near the Boston State House so my mother could make a stop at the bank. As we walked out of the train station, we were stopped by fire trucks and police barricades holding onlookers at bay. Above the streets loomed the highest steps of the Boston State House, still soaked and blackened by what seemed like a badly sprayed swastika. With a closer look, I saw that it was a man, burned to a grotesque crisp so that the most visible part of him now were his scorched legs, the unbending knees raised toward the sky. We asked what had happened and were told that he was a Haitian man who had soaked himself in gasoline, lit a match, and set himself on fire. His name was Antoine Thurel and he was fifty-six years old. The only clue to why he had killed himself was a large placard on which he had written a final letter in French. Loosely translated the sign read in part, 'Because of many difficulties and my family and religious responsibilities, I want to offer myself in holocaust for the complete liberation of my country… May Haiti live for the new liberation.'
Like the heroes of centuries past, like Boukman, Toussaint, Christophe, and Dessalines, and all the others who had given their lives fighting for the 'liberation' of our country, Mr. Thurel had made the ultimate sacrifice. He had proven that not all men go to war because they are forced to, but some because they feel they must set an example, sacrifice themselves in order to incite all of us to change.
The day Mr. Thurel died, as I watched the spot where his body burned again on the six o'clock news, I thought of one of the last sayings of an old man whom I called 'Pere' who lived with my family. Pere was a quiet, reserved man who analyzed everything; he was one of the brains who fled Haiti during the Sixties' brain-drain. Before he died of old age, in exile, Pere had uttered a phrase which I would not completely understand for years.
'Haiti is a cigarette burning at both ends,' he had said.
In their own way, both Pere and Antoine Thurel could have been alluding to Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem 'First Fig' about living fast, dying young, and leaving a beautiful corpse.
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-
It gives a lovely light.
Still, I found Pere's metaphor troubling. Is this why Mr. Thurel had died, for a cigarette burning at both ends? The imagery of a hopeless country being destroyed was one more to add to my list of negative things that I, as a Haitian child-and now a Haitian woman and mother-had been told about Haiti, about myself, not by outsiders but by my own. Mr. Thurel's action and Pere's words made me wonder about my love for Haiti and my love for myself as a Haitian.
Haitian families, whether they know it or not, teach self-hatred. I grew up with plenty of self-denigrating idioms, proverbs that offered such advice as: Don't let any Haitian boy touch the center of your palm; he'll steal your decency and turn you into a trollop. Don't let anyone read your books; they'll find whatever blessing was there for you. Don't eat from anyone; they'll steal your
It wasn't until I went to live in Cameroon, Africa, that I realized that blacks in Africa and elsewhere did love each other as a rule and that those who hated one another were exceptions to that rule. Only when we were paired against one another in divide-and-conquer style did that hatred begin. This love was reaffirmed for me by my host family in Cameroon. Sleeping in the same bed with my host sisters, I felt a kind of peace I had never felt before in my life. I felt like a tiger cub resting beside her mother's belly. I still feel that warmth and love when I receive a nod or an acknowledging smile from a black person or a Haitian person in the streets of Boston, New York, or Miami. But according to the proverbs and idioms that we are taught, we are all supposed to hate each other.
I have always been told and have come to realize for myself that Haiti
