20076: White: Restevek girl on hit list for giving Aristide flowers (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Randall White <raw@haitiaction.org>

One of Haiti's 400,000 resteveks (unpaid domestic
servants) is in hiding in Northern Haiti after
death squads targeted her after they looted her
school where they found a photograph of her
giving flowers to President Arstide. The girl,
whose name has been withheld for her own safety,
is 12 years old.


It is the words of Aristide that freed me and it
is the words about Aristide that condemn me.

My mother died when I was a child and my father
sent me to live with a family in Cap Haitian. I
was four years old. Every day I got up and I
washed the floor. I hauled water on my head. I
went to the market and bought food and charcoal.
I cooked the food and I washed the clothes. I did
work all day and my back hurt. I felt that I was
not a person, just a zombie walking around
asleep. I was not allowed to eat at the table or
sleep in a bed; instead I ate whatever food was
left when others were finished. I slept under the
table with the dogs. I was not yet alive. I had
not been born.

President Aristide spoke about the restaveks on
the radio and he said, "All the restaveks are
people." I did not know who he was so it made me
laugh because I thought he must be a fool to
think I was a person and to say that the
restaveks are the future of Haiti.

A woman who taught at the school for restaveks
became friends with the family I lived with and
they agreed to send me to the school in the
evenings. I learned to read and write my letters.
I learned to count, to add to and take away from.
I learned to sew and tell the time and how to do
needlepoint. I made many beautiful things.

My picture was taken with President Aristide when
he visited and it was put in the front of the
school office. The men came with guns and took
the picture they said they will kill me.

I know now that I am a dead person. I am a dead
person getting up in the morning. A dead person
eating rice. A dead person listening to the news
on the radio. Should I bother getting out of bed?
Should I bother dressing or eating or opening my
Bible? It is just a question now of when I will
physically die because my body is already marked
for death. I have not yet begun to live but I
know that I will die and today I no longer cry. I
have courage. I know truth. I do not weep anymore.

The truth is that I will die but they cannot kill
every single person in the country. In the future
the killing will have to stop and I talk to you
now so that before my life is finished you know
that there was a girl who lived in Cap Haitian
who once gave flowers to President Aristide and
who is now gone. That is the only thing I want,
it is to be remembered. To be remembered is to be
human. That is what it means to be respected and
to have peace in your heart.

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