started unloading the bags from the truck to bring them inside. We were also greeted by the smell of lunch being prepared by the maid my mom had arranged for our stay. Wow, I thought, a watchman AND a maid, this is VERY far from the projects. As we wandered around the house for the first time, I was impressed by how big it actually was. The pictures had not done it justice. When we stepped out onto the second floor balcony, which wrapped around most of the second level, my siblings and I couldn’t contain our glee that this was OUR HOUSE! We jumped up and down, hugging each other as our smiling parents looked on. This was going to be a very nice vacation indeed.
The road to Fort Jacques
The road was much twistier than I’d remembered. As the truck slowly made its way up the hill towards Mama and Papa Franchil’s house, my head was darting around, trying to take in all the sights and smells that had once been so familiar to me. The same characters were still there. The ladies along the roadside selling fried goat meat, chicken, and fried plantains; the ladies selling fruits and vegetables; the ladies carrying buckets of water on their heads; the men driving tap-taps, trucks, and buses… all of it was still there. As we ascended higher and higher up the road passing the Baptist Mission hospital where I had been born, I breathed in the fresh mountain air and took in the beautiful views across the valley. It was as if everything had been put on pause since I’d left and had started up again as soon as I arrived.
We reached the end of the paved road, and as the trucked lurched onto the rocky path ahead, I started to experience the familiar sensation of our truck bouncing along the rocky road. This had my little siblings and me laughing and shouting out “Whoaaaa” and “Oooooh” with each big bump as our roller coaster-like ride progressed. As my dad drove along some of the narrower stretches, we occasionally got precariously close to the edge of the road with nothing but deep valley far below us. We had only been in Haiti a couple of days, and Mom and Dad wanted to make sure one of the first visits I made was to see the two people who had raised me for the first seven years of my life. As we drew nearer to their house, everything was familiar except that it all seemed to be smaller than I’d remembered. I chuckled at the thought that things had seemed bigger while I was growing up there only because I had been so small. All the paths I used to walk, my school, the cornfield I used to raid, the houses, and churches I used to run by on my neighborhood patrols were all still there.
Mama and Papa Franchil were just as I had remembered them. My grandmother had come to visit us on Staten Island back in 1983 about three years after I’d left Haiti, but this was my first time seeing them both together since 1980. Smiles and tears filled their faces as we all embraced. They were so happy to see the whole family and me, and after hugs and kisses were exchanged, we sat down to eat. The conversation was lively, and neighbors kept showing up as news of our arrival spread around the neighborhood. My grandmother, in her soft way, was stroking my head, patting my hand, and looking at me with joy, as if she were seeing me for the first time. “Steee-ven” she kept repeating, as she smiled at me in the endearing way only a grandmother could. It was as if their long-lost grandson had been found.
As we talked, my grandmother reminded me of a time during her visit to New York when she had asked me at age ten what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I had told her confidently that I wanted to be an airline pilot. As it would turn out, she would sadly be the only one of my grandparents who would live to see me achieve my dream.
Delmas 65 and 65 Christopher
With my dad being one of six kids and Mom one of seven, I had more cousins than I could count. After our trip to visit my grandparents and neighbors up in Fort Jacques, most of the rest of our time that summer was split between our house in Delmas and my Uncle Moliere’s house. Uncle Moliere had a large, two level, five-bedroom house that had a wrap-around balcony even larger than the one my parents had. He and his wife had seven kids of their own: five of whom still lived at home. I was sixteen at the time, and my cousin Darby, age seventeen and I instantly became best friends. Also in the house were his two big brothers, both in their early twenties, Elrood and Walter, along with his younger twin sisters Judith and Jemima, who were both my age. The two eldest sisters in his family, my cousins Venante and Nancy, were actually living with us at my parent’s apartment in New York. Mom and Dad, over the years, had taken in many family members from both sides who arrived from Haiti and needed somewhere to stay as they got settled. Everyone from my uncles, aunts, countless cousins, and friends of the family would, at one time or another call my parent’s apartment in the projects, and later their house on Staten Island, home. Mom and Dad both had generous spirits, and they always tried to help as many people as they could. While the nucleus of the seven of us was always there, rarely were there only seven of us living in our home. However, while many cousins would come and go from our house over the years, this was the first time I was meeting these particular cousins. Betty and I were immediately taken by how fascinating, friendly, and just downright cool they all were. Mom and Dad spent their days visiting friends and family scattered all around the capital, and Mom would take my three younger siblings with her most of the time, so Betty and I got to hang out around town having fun with our older cousins, learning what it was like to be a teenager growing up in Haiti.
The days went by quickly with my family and I making the most of every minute of our time that summer. Although we were scattered around during the week, my parents always reunited the whole family every Sunday, and we went to a different church each time. After, we visited family and friends and had dinner at one of their homes, as was customary Haiti. Dad’s cousin Lucane, an engineer, and his wife Bernadette had a lovely house perched up in the hills on the side of cliff in an exclusive area called Black Mountain, with a view looking down onto the city of Port-Au-Prince below, and we had a couple of Sunday dinners there complete with music and good times. Uncle Lamartine and his wife Aunt Patricia, the American missionary whom he had married many years before, also had a beautiful house that they shared with their three daughters, Peggee, who was my age, Leanna, who was Betty’s age, and Jacqueline who was a few years younger. Uncle Lamartine was a tall, elegant man with a very calm, almost regal demeanor. I never saw him get angry or even raise his voice once. We went to their home a few times for dinner, and Betty spent a few nights there since she was around the same age as Uncle Lamartine’s girls.
As we visited family and friends all around the city, I was struck by how well my family and friends lived in comparison to the impoverished people all around us. A minority in Haiti were very rich (like the corrupt politicians, some business people, and entertainers) while another minority, such as my family and most of our family and friends, were in Haiti’s version of the middle-class, which meant that we lived very comfortable lives. This left the unfortunate majority of the population as very poor. In later years, after the start of my airline career, as I traveled to other developing countries like Brazil, Mexico, The Dominican Republic, and India, I observed the same dynamic in differing degrees: a very small middle class, an even smaller wealthy class, while the majority was poor. I would come to realize that in the developed countries, such as the US, Western Europe, and some parts of Asia, the majority of people were in the middle class. They were the ones working, paying taxes, and acting as the backbone of society. I wondered when my little Haiti would be that way.
The days and nights that we did spend at our own home were like a dream. Just like at Uncle Moliere’s house, breakfast, which was prepared by our maid, greeted us on the table whenever we decided to wake up. Our house at Delmas 65 was closer to the center of town than some of the houses of our other family members were, and the balcony had a view that encapsulated the class divisions in Haiti and the gulf between rich and poor. It looked out over a dry river valley full of little aluminum-roofed shacks, where many of Haiti’s poor lived. On the other side of the valley and along our street, were big, beautiful houses even larger than ours. Most of the maids and watchmen who lived in those small shacks in the valley worked for families such as ours. Many of the maids, watchmen, and other domestic workers were illiterate and sadly had been working since childhood. My mom and dad always paid them more than the going rate for domestic help and always gave them a little extra when they were leaving to go back to the US. That day finally came again, and it was time to say goodbye to our family, friends, and to our “Haiti Cherie” (dear Haiti). As we boarded our plane back to New York, I wondered