Popcorn, Kidnappings, and The Baron
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Popcorn, Kidnappings, and The Baron
The following is an account of two trips I recently made with a mobile medical team in Port-au-Prince. Father Rick Frechette and his medical team picked me up with their large truck in the morning. The plan each day was to work in two clinics in two slums on the waterfront in Port au Prince.
There were about six Haitian guys on his medical team in the vehicle. One morning Father told me that he needed to pick up the body of an old man and give it a proper burial before we headed to the clinics. Another missionary had notified Father of his death the day before.
Our driver drove us down to airport road and we headed across Route National 1. The Drouillard cemetery was on one corner and UN tanks on the other. We headed a few feet down Route National 1 and then took a hard left down a dirt road for two miles. I hadn’t been on this road for over a year. There was no traffic on this road which led to Cite Soleil due to the kidnappings and carjackings over the last several years. The soccer fields on the right were empty too.
At the end of the dirt road, we turned right onto notorious Route 9 which leads directly out of the slum. We headed north into the countryside for several miles.
The sugar cane fields looked really healthy to the east. Passing over a bridge revealed ladies down on the edge of the little grey river washing their clothes.
The missionary bringing the body was not at the second bridge as was planned and so Father called him with his cell phone. He said he was just several minutes away. A small crowd of people stopped on the edge of the road to see what we were doing. A man selling popcorn wrapped in cellophane bags came along and sold us about 10 bags that everyone seemed to dive into like we were at a movie.
Our driver drove us down to airport road and we headed across Route National 1. The Drouillard cemetery was on one corner and UN tanks on the other. We headed a few feet down Route National 1 and then took a hard left down a dirt road for two miles. I hadn’t been on this road for over a year. There was no traffic on this road which led to Cite Soleil due to the kidnappings and carjackings over the last several years. The soccer fields on the right were empty too.
At the end of the dirt road, we turned right onto notorious Route 9 which leads directly out of the slum. We headed north into the countryside for several miles.
The sugar cane fields looked really healthy to the east. Passing over a bridge revealed ladies down on the edge of the little grey river washing their clothes.
The missionary bringing the body was not at the second bridge as was planned and so Father called him with his cell phone. He said he was just several minutes away. A small crowd of people stopped on the edge of the road to see what we were doing. A man selling popcorn wrapped in cellophane bags came along and sold us about 10 bags that everyone seemed to dive into like we were at a movie.
Father takes the dead quite seriously in Haiti and he does all he can to give them a proper burial. He believes this is the highest form of charity. Father receives calls all the time for people who need a decent burial. He has even purchased plots in the cemetery we passed to bury the remains. If Father Rick did not do this, the bodies would go from the general morgue to a field north of where we were (Titanyen) where pigs would eat them or they would rot in the blazing sun.
As promised, a white van came from the north with a white man driving. A Haitian man was in the front passenger seat. The white man had a nice peaceful smile as he opened the back of the van. Lying on a green Styrofoam cushion was the body that needed a proper burial. It was covered with a white sheet with the deceased’s left elbow sticking out just a little.
The popcorn was put down, and we carefully lowered the body into the cardboard coffin and slipped the lid back on. Father said about five minutes of prayer in Creole including the Our Father and a song as we stared down at the coffin on the highway. Everything was done with respect as the people on the side of the road watched. We then lifted the coffin into the back of our truck, some guys climbed in beside it, and the rest sat up front in the two cabs. We turned around in the middle of the road and went zooming back into Port-au-Prince.
Upon arriving back at the Drouillard cemetery in the city, the graveyard man seemed happy to see us. He looked like he was about 80 years old and had a very distinguished face, with a full head of gray, straight hair.
We scooted the coffin out of the medical van and carried it to a vault that had the side panel removed by two men. Peering down into the hole that would be the body’s forever resting place, at least for now, revealed a drop-off of several feet. Another couple of prayers were said by Father and we slid the casket down into the dark hole and it landed with a clunk.
We walked several yards away where there is a “Baron’s Cross” to honor Baron Samdi who is chief of the Gede Spirits. These spirits are responsible for the dead, cemeteries, and procreation. Believers honor the Gede as well as their dead relatives in the cemetery.
At the foot of Baron’s cross, which was made out of stone, were burned human bones. I could identify femurs and humeri. A small empty bottle of rum was on the ground and a Haitian coin and two Gillette razors were carefully placed on one of the arms of the Baron’s cross.
After the burial, we piled back in the medical van, passed some white UN tanks in the street, and headed for La Saline. We stopped once on the way and purchased some small bags of water to have clean water to mix with the powdered antibiotics for the babies.
La Saline is another slum on the oceanfront. There are four main slums in Port-au-Prince occupying an eight-square-mile area. These slums are homes to hundreds of thousands of people.
I have been coming to Haiti for 25 years and La Saline was the worst area I have seen. I won’t try and describe the garbage, sewage, heat, people, and traffic as we inched our way through the slum. My written words wouldn't do it justice.
We headed to Waf Jeremy (Jeremy’s Wharf), a pathetic zone inside of La Saline. It sits right on the brown-colored Port-au-Prince Bay which flows in from the Caribbean. Because we couldn’t move in the traffic, we got out and carried the picnic-sized coolers filled with medication to the shanty Father uses as a clinic. The streets in Waf Jeremy were full of black puddles with pigs, people, and men pulling incredible loads on carts.
Upon arriving in the clinic, which had a dirt floor and corrugated metal walls, we found a 12-year-old girl lying on an old green army cot surrounded by many of the patients. She had an IV hung with the solution dripping in. Father said a quick prayer for her and for a successful clinic day and we started. I walked around the clinic and picked out the five sickest appearing adults and babies and they were drug and carried out to Father’s vehicle where they were transported to another clinic in the city where they could be admitted and given “more comprehensive care”. (Two adults acted confused as if they had typhoid fever from the miserable environment in which they lived.)
I was assigned an “office” in the corner. I had a chair and a small table for me to do my charting. The chairs where the patients would sit were stuck in the hard black mud and were not moveable.
Adults and children came in all morning long with hernias, abscesses, hypertension, heart failure, and malnutrition.
The clinic pharmacy was set up a few feet away from me where we could treat some of the basic tropical diseases that we encountered. We also had point-of-care lab tests which included HIV. Patients were given rendez-vous for the following week depending on their illness and need for follow-up.
Behind the metal wall a few feet away from me was a classroom that shared the same wall as our clinic. Children that were neatly dressed in red and white uniforms and appeared to be kindergarten were in the classroom. The room had no chalkboard, books, pencils, papers, crayons, or anything like that. The teacher sat at the door talking on her cell phone.
When clinic was almost over, I heard gunshots in the distance. It was hard to tell exactly where they originated. Our vehicle came back for us and we walked towards it for about a one-quarter mile gingerly weaving through the narrow paths with women on their doorsteps doing their laundry in large plastic bowls and kids in their uniforms hurrying home from school. People in the neighborhood waved good-bye to us. Some of our patients were walking with us. They were glad to be getting home because of the gunshots.
We left La Saline for Cite Soleil for our second clinic. Turning off of the main street into Soleil revealed four UN tanks with blue helmets seen barely poking out of the top. Two Jordanian UN troops were killed several weeks ago in a skirmish with one of the gangs in Soleil.
Behind the metal wall a few feet away from me was a classroom that shared the same wall as our clinic. Children that were neatly dressed in red and white uniforms and appeared to be kindergarten were in the classroom. The room had no chalkboard, books, pencils, papers, crayons, or anything like that. The teacher sat at the door talking on her cell phone.
When clinic was almost over, I heard gunshots in the distance. It was hard to tell exactly where they originated. Our vehicle came back for us and we walked towards it for about a one-quarter mile gingerly weaving through the narrow paths with women on their doorsteps doing their laundry in large plastic bowls and kids in their uniforms hurrying home from school. People in the neighborhood waved good-bye to us. Some of our patients were walking with us. They were glad to be getting home because of the gunshots.
We left La Saline for Cite Soleil for our second clinic. Turning off of the main street into Soleil revealed four UN tanks with blue helmets seen barely poking out of the top. Two Jordanian UN troops were killed several weeks ago in a skirmish with one of the gangs in Soleil.
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| Waf Jeremy |
The roads in Soleil were cleaner than in La Saline but some were completely blocked with large rocks to keep the UN forces out. Clinic was held in a two-story building made of cinderblock. There was no electricity and no running water. The ground floor was packed dirt. The upstairs floor was cement. It was nice and cool in the building—there were no windows and a breeze came through large spaces in the cinderblock. I checked pediatric patients downstairs and adults upstairs.
The Soleil children are usually accompanied by their mother and most were babies. I worked in a room that was dark and so I sat by the door to get as much light as I could to examine them and write a brief medical note.
Many of the babies and children were malnourished and many had fever. They were very docile and made little eye contact. The mothers were appreciative of anything we attempted to do for their children. As they were leaving they picked up their children’s medication in a room near the front door.
Upstairs the adults had the same complaints as most poor Haitians. However, some were just very stressed living in Soleil with the constant warfare between the gangs and the UN forces. The cinderblock wall behind my table had four divots from bullets.
After we had been working about an hour, a local gang leader with dreadlocks ascended the steps with his machine gun slung over his shoulder. He was just seeing how things were going and quietly talked with Father Rick for a while and left.
Clinic mercifully ended about 3:30 PM and we packed and left. However, Father had been sent a message that another more important gang leader wanted to see him before we left Soleil.
We stopped in his neighborhood and Father visited him for about 40 minutes. The gang leader there is considered the most vicious of the five leaders in Cite Soleil. He had a big smile for us but his eyes were very cold. Murals were painted on the wall of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another wall had a brightly painted machine gun. A Che Guervera flag flew in the breeze over the cement compound. Young men walked close by with their 45’s in their right front pocket. If I hadn’t seen the guns, it just looked like a cleaner neighborhood in Soleil. After the meeting was over, we left for home.
Father has a good relationship with all of the gang leaders which has allowed him to negotiate for the release of 60 kidnapped people who were held for ransom in Cite Soleil during the past year.
The Soleil children are usually accompanied by their mother and most were babies. I worked in a room that was dark and so I sat by the door to get as much light as I could to examine them and write a brief medical note.
Many of the babies and children were malnourished and many had fever. They were very docile and made little eye contact. The mothers were appreciative of anything we attempted to do for their children. As they were leaving they picked up their children’s medication in a room near the front door.
Upstairs the adults had the same complaints as most poor Haitians. However, some were just very stressed living in Soleil with the constant warfare between the gangs and the UN forces. The cinderblock wall behind my table had four divots from bullets.
After we had been working about an hour, a local gang leader with dreadlocks ascended the steps with his machine gun slung over his shoulder. He was just seeing how things were going and quietly talked with Father Rick for a while and left.
Clinic mercifully ended about 3:30 PM and we packed and left. However, Father had been sent a message that another more important gang leader wanted to see him before we left Soleil.
We stopped in his neighborhood and Father visited him for about 40 minutes. The gang leader there is considered the most vicious of the five leaders in Cite Soleil. He had a big smile for us but his eyes were very cold. Murals were painted on the wall of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another wall had a brightly painted machine gun. A Che Guervera flag flew in the breeze over the cement compound. Young men walked close by with their 45’s in their right front pocket. If I hadn’t seen the guns, it just looked like a cleaner neighborhood in Soleil. After the meeting was over, we left for home.
Father has a good relationship with all of the gang leaders which has allowed him to negotiate for the release of 60 kidnapped people who were held for ransom in Cite Soleil during the past year.
The kidnapping in Haiti is higher than any other country in the western hemisphere. Port-au-Prince is particularly dangerous. People are taken in the street, many in the middle of the day, and delivered to a particular gang in the slum. Calls are made to the captive’s family and ransom discussed. With Father’s influence, the ransom is brought to another gang leader and the taken person is hopefully safely transferred as is the money.
The ransom money is used to buy more bullets and more rum.
And on we go.
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My Comments in 2021--
1. It is sad. After 15 years, I know how the lives of the two above gang leaders ended up. And now in 2021, there are new gang leaders in the slum. And Port-au-Prince has been rocked with kidnapping the past year which disrupts their society which is already massively disrupted.
2. Father Rick Frechette still continues his amazing work in Haiti. And he is a very gifted writer wonderfully describing Haiti and its challenges.
3. Karen Bultje, a Canadian missionary working in Port au Prince for three decades, posted this today--February 28, 2021:
"We just got back from filming the protests. Thousands of people were on the streets peacefully protesting on Delmas. 50,000 + It was awesome seeing thousands of people walking both young and old protesting against the kidnapping and insecurity in the country. This morning a pediatrician was killed after he tried to avoid being kidnapped. Pray for security in the country. Reginald Boulos, one of the opposition leaders was in the protest."
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