Haitian Youths Wait and Hope for a New Life

JACKSON, Miss. —  For 72 Haitian children, most of them teen-age boys, an old red-brick YWCA building here just blocks from the state Capitol has become the next-to-last stop on a refugee odyssey that began with a desperate voyage at sea.

The children are among the first wave of more than 350 unaccompanied Haitian minors who are being permitted into the United States to pursue political asylum claims. They had been picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard while fleeing their Caribbean homeland in crude wooden sailboats.

All were flown directly here from the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As they bide their time at the YWCA, awaiting assignment to relatives or foster families around the United States, the Haitians make up an extraordinary but little-noticed community of youthful refugees, some of whom have fled military persecution, others who simply chose to leave their country.

For the last two weeks, the Haitians have been cooped up inside the three-story “Y,” enduring a quarantine imposed after one child came down with chicken pox. On Monday, after state health officials lifted the quarantine, resettlement director Lou Johnston immediately announced an afternoon picnic at a nearby park.

Her announcement sent a new wave of excitement though a building that already was pulsing with the energy of 72 teen-agers. A couple of dozen boys romped in the gym, firing a basketball at the rim while another group of youths who had gathered around a blaring radio worked on their hip-hop moves.

“We’re all going stir crazy,” said Johnston, who runs the program for Catholic Charities of Jackson. “We’ve got to get out of the building.”

Along with the excitement over the picnic, Johnston and her staff were also preparing for a visit today from Washington officials of the U.S. Catholic Conference, which has contracted with the U.S. Justice Department’s Community Relations Service to resettle some 7,000 Haitian boat people allowed into the United States.

About 40 Haitian children have already passed through the building, which the Haitians have christened “Hope House,” to be reunited with relatives or to join foster families. Thirty-eight others are due to move on this week, their places at the YWCA filled immediately by those now at Guantanamo, the tent city sanctuary that President Bush announced last week would be closed down after its population peaked at 12,500.

By June 15, beds for 98 other Haitian children will become available at a YWCA camp 30 miles outside of town. Unused for five years, the cabins are being repainted and the brush cleared away.

Along with classes in English and American geography, the youngsters are also being taught to recognize copperheads and water moccasins. “There are no poisonous snakes in Haiti, you know,” explained Johnston, a Jackson native.

Among those here is Jossme Bernave, 17, who has been sharing a crowded room at the YWCA for a month or more, awaiting placement in a foster home that could be in Miami, Philadelphia, Peoria, Ill., Grand Rapids, Mich., or Los Angeles.

He is among those who fled Haiti in fear of their safety.

“Every day, people in Haiti shoot--boom!” said Bernave, one of the few who has picked up enough English to carry on a limited conversation. Most speak only Creole.

Almost all of the boys and girls arriving here by military transport have no idea where Mississippi is until an orientation meeting, when they are shown a dot on a map. Lydia Barret, a spirited 15-year-old wearing a Bank of Mississippi T-shirt, said she had heard of Miami and thought that was her destination when she, her parents and a brother left Port-au-Prince on a boat several months ago.

Instead, after two days at sea, the boat was stopped by the Coast Guard, and she and her family were taken to Guantanamo. From there, her parents and brother were sent home, but, for reasons that are not entirely clear, she was designated an unaccompanied minor by U.S. immigration officials and permitted to seek asylum.

With a smile that belied her anxiety about the unknown, she slapped the backs of her hands together in a “come what may” gesture Monday and offered: “I’m a little worried. But I’ll go to school and do my best to make something of myself.”

Barret is scheduled to leave Jackson Friday for a foster home. She has not been told where.

The exodus of unaccompanied minors from Haiti is reminiscent of the several thousand youths who were smuggled out of Vietnam to avoid military service after the fall of Saigon in 1975. In this case, many young Haitian men are trying to escape because they are seen as potential threats to the military government.

The children brought here range in age from 9 to 17, and all appear healthy and vibrant. Of the 10 girls here Monday, at least three were pregnant, according to counselor Paul Jean.

One, Saintamise Alix, 17, is due to deliver her child next month. What does the future hold for her and her unborn baby? “God decides,” she replied.

Optimism abounds, as interviews with several of the children made clear. Many seemed not to know the meaning of “foster care.” They repeated the phrase in English, as if it were a specific destination. “I think I will like it,” said Claudia Bellegarde, 14.

The Haitian children learn of their departures from Jackson, via commercial airline flights, on the day before they leave, when youth care coordinator Vick Sorel makes the announcements just before lunch.

“The prayer goes up, and grace comes down,” Sorel shouted Monday before revealing the names of those who would be leaving. Each traveler stood to a rousing cheer from their friends.

On Monday lunch was chicken gumbo over rice, and the 10 names read out included one boy headed for Maryland. He said he had never heard of Maryland, but he was eager to go.

Counselor William Destin, who left Haiti 10 years ago and has visited his homeland several times recently, said these children were “much more willing to take risks than I was.”

“Children in Haiti now have seen people get killed. They think it is better to die in the ocean than stay there.”

Velma Hoover, a psychologist working with the immigrants, contrasted the Haitians with their American contemporaries and found them “hungry for information, willing to work hard.”

“These kids want to go to school, get a marketable skill,” she said. “They have been through such hardship. I think most American kids would have rioted by now. They are going to be able to share and not just be takers.”

On the wooden gymnasium floor on Monday, in advance of the visit today from Catholic Conference officials, counselors tried gamely to rehearse a Haitian dance demonstration to a wildly rhythmic beat of conga drums, aluminum pans and a lead pipe, which one boy played like a clarinet. Other staffers set out displays of arts and crafts. The paintings were of sailboats and palm trees; the balsa wood creations depicted huts and airplanes.

Although more than 350 Haitian youngsters are due to pass through Jackson in the next few months, few in this city of parks and government offices seem to have taken much notice. “They have not been high profile,” said Jackson Mayor Kane Ditto. In fact, Ditto added, he has never paid a visit to the Haitians at the YWCA, and did not know the camp was to be opened later this month.

“When we started, we didn’t know what to expect,” said Johnston, who helped bring the program to Jackson because she had worked with Vietnamese children in the 1970s. “But we have received donations of money, clothing and volunteers. I think we’ve only had two negative calls.”

“It’s a privilege to help these kids,” Johnston said. “I really like them.”

Since the ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide by a military coup last September, some 34,000 people fleeing the country have been intercepted at sea.