27510: Eaton: (comment) My friend, General Toutou (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Frank Eaton <frankeaton@mac.com>

After two days of negotiations and botched ransom drops had cost our benefactors nearly $28,000, my friend Alain and I were still sitting in our little concrete bed and breakfast in Belecourt, playing endless hands of diamonds with our captors.

We were losing money on this enterprise at an alarming rate, and our kidnappers still hadn't seen a dime.  Each time they returned from the Hopital St. Catherine empty handed, the guns would come out, the threats would fly, and the Haitian Hillbilly and I would sweat out the last of the precious bottled water from our bodies.  It was time to try something different.

I placed a phone call to a friend who knew some people who knew some people from the neighborhood.  By the third morning, I was assured that a foolproof plan had been set in motion and that today, I would be released.  A new interlocutor had been contacted and had agreed to facilitate the transfer.  This time, it would work.

At five o'clock that afternoon, I was told that I was free.   I followed a teenager with a rifle through the warren of shacks until we reached the canal.  A young man was waiting for me by the waters edge.  As we stepped into the rowboat that would take us to the northern side, he introduced himself.

"I am Toutou".  He smiled and shook my hand.  He appeared to be in his late twenties and was dressed in red and white Fubu gear.  He would have been unremarkable in the context of a suburban American high school.  As it was, we were sitting in a dingy in the middle of a filthy canal in Cite Soleil at sunset and he was the Chief of the slum of Bel Aire.

On the far side, we got onto the back of a motorcycle; me behind the driver, Toutou behind me.  We rode perhaps two miles to a spot down the road from the UN base where a friend was waiting for me.  Here, we shook hands again, I thanked the General and said goodbye.

It's interesting to see him pop up in news stories in his new role as activist.  I'm tempted to grant him the benefit of the doubt: he fetched me from Belecourt as a favor to a friend.  He strikes me as a guy between two identities: no longer a "warlord"--and not yet a politician.   That's a funny place to be, I can imagine.

Short of an amnesty program, we'll have to make do with simple forgiveness, and trust that at least a few of these guys ARE attempting to transition into meaningful, legitimate leadership roles in their neighborhoods.

Frank Eaton
211 East Third Street
Winston-Salem, NC 27101
(336) 624.3717