Young Children Are More Easily Intimidated

Before I visited Foyer Maurice Sixto, I had accepted the misfortune of restavèks as part of the harsh reality of Haitian life.  This is a country where the gross national product per capita income is $370.  The figure for the neighboring Dominican Republic is $1,230.  Seventy-seven percent of Haiti's rural population does not have access to safe drinking water.  The same statistic for Burundi is 31 percent.  A Catholic priest in Celine's hometown of Jeremie once told me: "There are three types of Haitians.  The first eats three times a day.  The second eats one meal a day.  The third doesn't know when he'll eat next." A restav at least gets one-meal per day and a roof to sleep under.

What particularly disturbed me at Foyer Maurice Sixto was that there were children at the school as young as four.  Because these children are separated from their families and work eight to ten hours a day, they do not receive the love, affection, and attention that all children deserve.  Consequently, they frequently appear emotionally and physically younger than they really are.  Several of the four-year-old restavèks I saw at Foyer Maurice Sixto looked like younger children.  Among some employers, the motivation for hiring very young restavèks is equally disturbing: They want the children to be as young as possible so they can be easily intimidated and trained to be particularly docile.

Katherine Grisby is the UNESCO education officer in Haiti. "Children working as domestics are from very poor families." she said.  "What happens is these kids cannot go to school as others do. They also lose their connection with their families, and they are already stigmatized by poverty.  Standard education cannot solve the problem because they also need psychological training.”

Foyer Maurice Sixto, Grisby noted, is a model for trying to assist Haitian children in domestic servitude.  The school is located in the Carrefour slum, near the outer limits of the sprawling Haitian capital.

Before I spoke with Celine, Father Jean-Baptiste told me, "The restavèk is a result of the economy, the misery and the poverty of Haiti.  Usually the children come from outside Port-au-Prince.  There are intermediaries who set the child up with the family who employs them.  There's a myth in the countryside that the streets of Port-au-Prince are paved with gold.  The families in rural areas feel they can improve themselves if a child goes to the capital.

NEXT>> . . . 1, 2, 3, 4