RESTAVEK OR "STAY WITH"

   Disadvantaged children in Haiti face a problem called the Restavek. A restavek can be defined as either the person or the system. Often rural families who cannot care for their children send them to other caretakers in urban areas where education and living conditions are better. The intent is positive. The children are expected to do housework in exchange for receiving care and education. But often these children are subjected to abuse and poor treatment by their "caretakers." As a result, these children do not receive a proper education and suffer physical, mental and emotional abuse.
   Jean Cadet was once a restavek himself and has founded a non-profit organization called the Jean R. Cadet Restavek Organization which brings awareness of this travesty and works to end child slavery in Haiti. The Pan American Development Foundation did a door-to-door poll recently and discovered 225,000 restaveks in Haiti, as well as "11% of households who have restaveks send their own children to work as restaveks for someone else."
   According to CNN. "The United Nations condemns Restavek as a 'modern form of slavery' where children are forced to serve the families they've been sent to by doing domestic work." Restaveks and the Restavek system are the main focus of the Internaional Organization for Migration (IOM) in Haiti. Sadly, restavek is translated as "stay with," which has a sense of irony for these children who may never get out of this system. Some of the children who manage to escape are picked up by authorities and are referred to the Haitian Social Welfare Institute. They are then sent to another care taking facility until their biological families can be reached. When these children are no longer needed, their "caretakers" release them from the household. The children are left to fend for themselves. Girls may be forced into servitude or become prostitutes and the boys often become criminals. IOM seeks to address and help them.
   Most of the restaveks are taken from their homes because the parents are told, "You have too many children. Let us take them and you will get money to start a small business. You 'll be able to visit the United States.." Since these parents live in impoverished conditions, they give their children away to what they believe is a better future.
   Haitian Homes for Haitian Children works to keep families intact and prevent child abandonment. Their goal is to see a day when the abuse of the restavek system ends and child slavery in all forms seeks to exist.

              By Alex Le

HAITIAN WOMEN

Having worked in Haiti for over 15 years with both medical clinics as a pharmacist and now with families and education, nothing has impressed me more than the strength of the Haitian women. The heavy loads they carry without complaint never cease to amaze me. A very large number of Haitian homes are headed by single women, sometimes with many children who may be fathered by one itinerant man or several different men. Because there is such a high rate of unemployment, it is very likely that the woman is the major wage earner, selling items in the market.

Haitian women are proud and carry themselves with their heads high, as well they should. They raise their children to be respectful and polite. I often watched mothers with sick children all wait quietly for hours to see a medical practitioner. In one clinic a woman sat a long time with a sick child to see one of our nurse practitioners. We discovered eventually that she was in labor the whole time. When asked if she was going to the hospital from there, she answered that she was going home where her husband would deliver the baby.

My favorite family in Haiti is headed by a wonderful woman of 5 sons and a daughter. She and her mother raised them alone in a small 2 room house where she provided for them by selling in the market. All of the older boys have college educations and one is studying out of the country for his doctorate. Truly, this woman is my role model.

 

Madame Paraison and her Mother