D’ÊTRE ÉTUDIANT
Once classes are over I often wonder what kind of environment the students go home to. Leaving through the gates of the campus just after five into the long shadows of twilight some hitch a ride on the back of a comrade’s moto, others flag down crowded tap taps on the main road while many do the long walk on the four to five kilometre trek through fields and country roads to reach their domiciles in the city. Their ages span 17 to 29 years and their family situations are diverse to say the least – single parents are the norm as are extended family units who all share close quarters. I got a glimpse into one student’s personal life when I went to see his excellent work in papier mâché – one of the age-old artisanal traditions here in Jacmel and made famous in their Carnival. His masques and forms were stored in a relief-issue tent on the site of his former house, which was destroyed in the 2010 quake when the adjacent house toppled over taking the whole block with it. Luckily his mother and two siblings survived the crash – and they live today on the site – sharing part of a rear residence with neighbours and using the tent as a bedroom as well as storage. The gap between both structures define the rock and dirt courtyard where activities of work and play take place each day – surrounding a highly coveted hole in the ground that is the communal well. The man of the house since his father died ten years before, the student introduced me to his mother who was rocking back and forth on a stool, skirts up, breasts swaying, straddling a washtub while singing along with a neighbour in a similar pose as they tended to the washing and hanging of the family’s clothes. They looked my way, returned a proud smile then summoned the children to take a look at the blanc who had invaded their world.
An incident involving another student affected the whole school. One of the first year students – a slight young man in his twenties: not with the tall, robust build of the majority of his peers – was the doorman at a downtown club called the Belvedere; one of the few modern venues where students and locals like to hang out because of its splendid bar, theatre stage and film projection facilities. The student stopped a suspicious character from entering the bar because he was carrying a gun. The character turned out to be a plain-clothes policeman – but instead of declaring himself so, the cop became incensed and proceeded to punch and beat the student to the ground. The ensuing confusion involving the bar denizens and passing public spilled into the street and brought more police to the scene – the end result being that the student was not taken to the hospital but rather to jail and the guilty cop was allowed to disappear in the crowd. The next day when the word got out that the black and blue student was languishing in the jail brought a show of solidarity from thirty of his classmates and friends – they massed out front of the police station and refused to leave until the student was released and allowed medical treatment – and the guilty cop was brought up on charges. Police diffused the situation by agreeing to the first demand but not until the following day so the student had to nurse his bruises and wounds for one more night in the severe conditions of the jail (these I got a glimpse of when I changed the papers of my moto). I saw the student after his release when he was returning from a hospital in Port-au-Prince – he showed me the stitches in his head and reported he was awaiting x-ray results for his jaw and ultrasound results for his stomach. He returned to school in two days without any satisfaction – the guilty cop was never charged and the case faded into the murkiness that is Haitian justice.
