21587: (Hermantin) Miami-Herald-Coast Guard returns 686 migrants to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Wed, Apr. 28, 2004


Coast Guard returns 686 migrants to Haiti

With the weekend interdictions of 686 Haitians, the Coast Guard has returned
1,591 migrants since Feb. 21.

BY JOE MOZINGO

jmozingo@herald.com


CARREFOUR, Haiti - The U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday returned 686 Haitians
migrants who were found over the weekend packed shoulder-to-shoulder in
three crude sailboats drifting toward the Bahamas and Florida.

The three interdictions were the first since the upheaval of February and a
reminder that, while the political violence has subsided, the outlook for
many Haitians is still so dismal they will risk their lives just to get to
the slums of Nassau.

''We had so many troubles, we didn't care if it was safe,'' said Baudelair
Joinel, 28.

Joinel decided to leave his three children behind in the town of
Port-de-Paix because he thought there might be some manual labor in Nassau.
He and his friends scoured the already-scoured landscape for enough scraps
of wood and cloth to build a boat that would carry 173 people.

They sailed three days before they were caught.

Coast Guard officials say Joinel's boat and the two other sailboats were
''dangerously overloaded'' with their decks just a foot or so above the
water surface.

''They were packed so tight it was extraordinary,'' said Capt. Daniel
Nelson. ``A wave would just capsize that in a second.''

The Coast Guard cutter Forward intercepted the first boat -- a 50-footer
with 380 people -- on Friday 18 miles off the coast in the Gulf of Gonave.

The cutter Gallatin stopped Joinel's boat Saturday. And later in the day it
intercepted the third, carrying 133 migrants, south of Turks and Caicos.

With the weekend's interdictions, the Coast Guard has returned 1,591 Haitian
migrants since Feb. 21. An average year will see nearly 5,000 repatriations.

The numbers don't compare to the mass exodus seen in 1992 and 1994, when
more than 30,000 migrants were intercepted and repatriated each year.

But Tuesday's repatriations show that the urge to flee across open ocean for
anything or anywhere is still a powerful force in this stiflingly poor
nation.

Odali Charles, 41, knew the danger of the passage. Her husband was a
fisherman who set out into the straits one stormy day four years ago and
never returned.

But feeding her seven children with the dollar or so she made a day washing
clothes in a river was becoming impossible. So she packed her best flowered
dress into a plastic bag and climbed aboard a creaky homemade boat in
Port-de-Paix.

Nothing but the ''grace of the Lord'' guided her fate.

''You die or you live,'' she said, shrugging and showing the fatalism that
is one means of survival in Haiti.

Charles didn't even know if she would find work on the other side.

''I don't know,'' she said. ``You just go. You never know.''

And so she joined the hundreds of other tired, deflated faces who stepped up
on the concrete dock here and reluctantly plodded over the dreck-filled
harbor into the country they are desperate to leave.

Charles put on her dress for the occasion.

She stepped onto shore and the government handed her a sandwich, a bottle of
orange juice and the equivalent of $8 to take a bus home -- literally across
the country.

She found some shade and waited while two workers with concrete-crusted
wheel-barrows unloaded everyone's belongings in a pile.

There were a few small backpacks, but mostly just ratty old grocery bags
with little more than a change of clothes.

Darlene Gurelyn, a 24-year-old mother who brought her 3-month old daughter
and 6-year-old son, sat on a planter, gazing into the middle distance,
seasick and broken.

She had no options. She didn't know what she was going to do five minutes
from then, much less tomorrow or next week.

''There is no job in Haiti and no food for my children,'' she said. `

`When you get on the boat, I throw my faith to God. God will take care of
the children.''

_________________________________________________________________
>From must-see cities to the best beaches, plan a getaway with the Spring
Travel Guide! http://special.msn.com/local/springtravel.armx