20465: radtimes: A Call From Haiti, Where Life Goes For Cash (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

A Call From Haiti, Where Life Goes For Cash

http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/columnists/hc-ubinas0314.artmar14,1,1939894.column?coll=hc-columnists-news

by Helen Ubiņas
March 14, 2004

She cannot watch the images being thrown at her from the television or the
newspapers. Pictures of wounded and dead Haitians, of men and women with
faces full of blood and despair.

Just a few weeks ago it could have been Rosana Anselme's sister in the
pictures, bleeding in the street where they grew up, her stomach blown
apart by a rebel's rifle.

Anselme was making breakfast in her Hartford home when the phone rang. Her
husband picked up and then went silent. She saw his face drop and knew
something was wrong, so she picked up an extension and heard her brother's
voice: Her sister Lelen had been shot. It didn't look good. Could Rosie
send money so the doctors will treat her?

"Here, it is life first and then money," Anselme says. "There, it is money
or no life."

A group of rebels, angry that someone had burned their car, attacked her
sister when they saw her standing outside her home with bags. Relatives
told Anselme that Lelen had heard the rebels were coming and was planning
to run to a safer place. They stopped her and mocked her for trying to
flee. She fell to the ground when they shot her. They kicked her and beat
her with the butts of their guns, and then shot her again in the arm before
they left.

She dragged herself to the neighbors', begging for help. She handed them
all the money in her pocket, money Rosie had sent for tuition but that had
to be used to convince them to risk their lives to get her to a hospital.
Now she needed more money for the hospital and the doctor.

Of course Anselme sent more money. She sent all she had, about $600. She
has sent money to her family since she came to the States eight years ago
to join her husband. It is how things are done, she says. Many of the
10,000 Haitians who live in Connecticut help support their families back home.

Friends have called Anselme to ask about her sister. They are concerned,
but they are also afraid that one day they will be the ones getting a call
about a wounded or dead relative. "There is so much fear," she says. When
she dares to read or watch accounts about Haiti, she barely recognizes her
country. "I don't know that Haiti," she says.

Until the most recent violence, she says, her home just outside of
Port-au-Prince was modest, but safe. A home that Anselme helped make more
comfortable for her family with the money she sent back from Hartford.

Anselme was paying Lelen's way through nursing school. She was also paying
for another sister's university studies in accounting before an armed group
recently destroyed much of the school.

Helping out isn't easy; Anselme has her own family to take care of. But as
the oldest, she is the caretaker. She enjoys the role, really. When they
were growing up, she would advise her sisters about school, about boys,
about going to school so that they didn't need boys. Now, besides money,
she sends care packages full of clothes and food. "There is no Salvation
Army for me," she says. "I am their Salvation Army."

Her sister has had two operations already: one to repair the damage to her
stomach and another when her wound became infected. There might have to be
more surgery, but for now she is doing better. Anselme has talked to her.

"She sounds good," she says. And then more quietly, "She sounds scared."

"I told her everything would be all right, that I would take care of her."

But then the doctor said he would need $4,000 to treat her sister. It is
extortion, she knows that. But she would gladly pay him anything for saving
her sister's life. And in Haiti, when someone hears that you have a
relative in America, they assume you have lots of money, Anselme said.

"That we're millionaires." She laughs, self-consciously. "I should be
crying," she says. "But crying comes later."

She used to work as a nurses' aide at the Greenwood Health Center before
she got laid off after a fire there. Now, she picks up weekend work there
every other week and any on-call assignments she can get. Her husband, she
says, is out of work right now.

But she didn't tell the doctor, or her sister, any of this.

Instead, each time the phone rings she prays it's an offer of work, another
chance to take care of her little sister.
---------------
Helen Ubiņas' column runs Thursdays and Sundays. She can be reached at
Ubinas@courant.com.

E-mail: ubinas@courant.com

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