The Boat People’s Plight and Deadly Perseverance (Je suis Haitian!)

Apr 26, 2015 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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Countryman – Stories about life, in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective

By Dennis Nichols
We ought to see them through eyes of compassion – see the misery etched on their faces; their wide-eyed

hope, and begin to appreciate the plight and the deadly perseverance of the ‘boat people’ historically fleeing poverty, political turmoil, and war, in the land of their birth.
From Vietnam to Haiti and Cuba, and more recently Africa and the Middle East, they have journeyed, surviving or dying in the waters of the South China, Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas. And last Sunday more than 800 of them perished in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya.
I saw them in The Bahamas; the faces of Haitian migrants (refugees if you will) who every year, flirt with death in the Caribbean waters between Hispaniola, The Bahamas and Florida. Many die. But many more continue to make the perilous journey, prompted by the prospect of a life relatively free from the kind of poverty and misery they left behind, fueled by the need for cheap labour in The Bahamas, and the hope of economic gain in America.
When they do make it to shore in The Bahamas, many Haitian migrants face detention and repatriation. The clandestinely-lucky ones get to stay, and hopefully integrate into Bahamian society. But it is part of a process filled with uncertainty, and a bureaucratic nightmare conjured by that country’s immigration regulations, aimed at preserving Bahamian interests. However valid, admittedly it is a problematic issue for them.
Haitian migrants, Haitian schoolchildren, even those born and raised in The Bahamas

to non-Bahamian parents, find themselves subject to laws which now require all residents to have passports from their parents’ country of origin, and all schoolchildren to have student residency permits by the beginning of this new school year. Going back to Haiti to initiate this process would be a near impossibility for most of them.
Some of those who attempt integration achieve a degree of residency, prestige, and financial security, often by dint of industry and by ‘working’ the system. They seem to be accepted as honorary citizens, lauded for their rapid ‘Bahamianization’. But many are subject to varying forms of discrimination, while some young Haitian-Bahamians fall prey to gang affiliation and criminal activity.
During the time I spent in The Bahamas, I interacted with several Haitians, generally schoolchildren and their families. In most instances, I found them to be hardworking and respectful, sometimes overly so. In many public schools, a minority of Haitian students outperformed their Bahamian counterparts for the most part, and generally displayed

greater social awareness. For them, not succeeding academically wasn’t an option because they had so much more to lose.
I recall once giving a composition assignment to a 9th grade class in which students were to explore their aspirations. Most wrote about going to the USA, getting rich, meeting popular entertainers, and eating American ‘fast’ food. The one Haitian child in the class (a girl) wrote about her professional ambitions, the support of her family for such, and the efforts she would make to give back to her parents for that support.
Many Haitian adults were engaged in menial jobs, as handymen, gardeners, cleaners – jobs that some Bahamians, although unskilled, wouldn’t be caught dead doing. They toiled much, complained little, and seemed resigned to accepting the platitudes and the condescension of their bosses. And not only employers; I’ve heard Bahamians from every stratum of society taunt and trivialize Haitian migrants for their appearance, their manner of speech, their illegal status; even the submissiveness that is expected of them as a matter of course.
I had cause to caution several schoolchildren on the way they speak to, and about, their ‘brothers and sisters’ from an island less than 100 miles from the southernmost point of the Bahamian archipelago, and linked geographically, historically and economically to it for the past 200 years. The disparagement from schoolchildren is more often than not a pretty clear reflection of the attitudes of parents, caregivers, and adults in general, to Haitians.
On a number of occasions I heard Bahamians speak dismissively of their maids, gardeners, and handymen. Some use terms that imply almost chattel-like ownership. ‘Girl, my Haitian …’ or ‘I have a Haitian …’ or ‘Just get a Haitian …’ in that matter-of-fact tone which assumes the subservience of one to the other.(The way some people treat our ‘junkies’ here) Few Haitians, especially recently-arrived illegals, may have the acuity of mind or the temerity to respond aptly to such belittling talk.
Things could get worse. Over the past few months, Bahamian immigration officers have been carrying out island-wide sweeps, searching vehicles, business places, and residences, and carting off several undocumented migrants, mostly Haitians, but also Jamaicans, Filipinos and Chinese, including very young children, who are taken to Nassau’s detention centre for possible repatriation.
(For whatever reasons, Guyanese are hardly ever targeted in these operations. However I once endured a scary confrontation when six heavily-armed policemen turned up at my Nassau home at one a.m. looking for illegal immigrants. Thankfully, it took just a minute to convince them that my family and I weren’t, neither were we hiding any. My Guyanese accent may have helped.)
But for thousands of Haitians and a handful of other expats, the threats of arrest, detention and deportation are very real. Bahamian immigration officials and ordinary Bahamians complain that the Haitian ‘problem’ is overwhelming the country’s social services, including health and education, and hampering its tourist-based economy.
Some also cite national security concerns, stemming in part from cross-nation smuggling/human trafficking, and from cultural differences in language (Many Haitians speak French Patois) and religious practice (voodoo) as being responsible for the Haitian-Bahamian muddle.
Despite all of this, Haitians by the boatload continue to traverse Caribbean waters, head for The Bahamas or Florida, and thwart the efforts of Bahamian and American maritime authorities to stop them. This has been going on since the late 1950s, during the era of ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier’s regime, and shows little sign of easing.
Like the Vietnamese boat people of the 1970s and the recent African/Middle East exodus via the Mediterranean, the threat of capture or death is subsumed in the simple and visceral promise of a better life. Death, it may be concluded, is preferable to misery.
And what about the Guyanese exodus over the past several decades? Yes, we too have been fleeing our homeland, first to the ‘Motherland’ then overwhelmingly to ‘Uncle Sam’. Both Mother and Uncle have been kind to us. And it was logistically easy, with a stagnating population of three-quarters of a million souls, to make the transition to greener northern pastures.
However, unlike the majority of boat-people migrants, Guyanese do return home occasionally, if only for the purpose of holidaying or flaunting their recently-acquired materialism. Nevertheless, some opt to stay, to invest or ‘give back’ to their birth land, to spend their final days, and to ensure eternal rest under tropical skies.
The Haitian refugees have little such option. From a country wracked by political upheaval, poverty and natural disaster, they continue to haemorrhage, fleeing in makeshift boats. They continue to flounder on the open seas and lose their lives. They continue to surge northward, and they continue to beat the odds in whatever new settings they encounter.
I identify and commiserate with those who continue to struggle and with those who ‘make it’. In this context, “Je suis Haitian!”

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