Theres a lot of things that happen here in Haiti that we don’t always report on. We try to represent Haiti in a positive light and therefore keep a lot of more negative stories to ourselves. On Valentines Morning we woke up to a call from one of our employees telling us there was a “problem” at our front gate. A few hours later Nick came home and was just about ready to put the kids and I on that days flight to leave Haiti forever. He was not sure if after the mornings events it would still be physically safe for our family to reside here. Instead of keeping this story to ourselves, this time we are going to share it to help others understand what life can sometimes look like for our family.
In order to fully understand this story, we have to start at the very beginning, from when we very first started New Roots. Before we had even moved out here Nick met a man from the community who we will call Micheal, obviously not his real name. I distinctly remember Nick telling me that if anyone was going to cause us problems it would be him and therefore wanted to ensure our relationship with him was good from the start. A week after moving to the farm, Nick ended up in the States for a month having back surgery. He hired Micheal to do security for the boys and I in his absence. Unfortunately there was something about Micheal that I was uncomfortable with and I just didn’t want him being around our kids. When Nick returned I asked him to let Micheal go. We continued to pull him on for day labor jobs when we had special projects, but never gave him an official job on the farm.
Fast forward a year and Micheal found himself another job, although much less ethical. Turns out Micheal was a well known murderer in our community and was hired to murder a 20 year old man that someone had a grudge against. Not only did Micheal go forward with this, but he shot the young man in broad daylight at a Mardi gras parade in front of a large crowd of people (umm, remember the part about Nick leaving the kids and I in his care? In hind sight we were probably never safer as no one was going to mess with us with him around). Immediately following this event the community chased him away and he went into hiding for a few months. An arrest warrant was written against him, but in Haiti in order to have someone arrested you basically have to tackle them, tie them up, and keep them hostage until the police arrive. Of course no one was going to do this, so after a while Micheal returned home and lived in the village as if nothing had happened.
Let’s fast forward again to November of this year. As you have heard us share, things have been difficult in Haiti: inflation, schools closed down, and political instability known locally as Peyi Lok, which translates to “Nationwide Lock down.” Micheal was no doubt feeling the effects of this as were many people in our community. Micheal is a fairly heavy drug user, and one of his suppliers is a gang leader in a neighboring village. This village gang has a deal with a Large US Aid organization where they get paid “ghost wages” in order to NOT cause problems. Basically, they have false names on their payroll list to ensure that no one threatens the project. Micheal was encouraged to ask of the same thing from us.
Micheal demanded that our number one Jovenel either hire him or pay him ghost wages. This of course would be unfair not only to us and our donors, but more importantly unfair to our 39 employees who work hard every day. Jovenel of course said no and as a result Micheal began to send him death and kidnapping threats. Gang related kidnappings are on a rise through out the country right now and something that has most people terrified. These threats got so bad and so intense, that Jovenel had a body guard follow him into and out of work for a while. He also had to get a new cell phone number so that Micheal would quite calling and threatening his life.
Nick and I have had death threats. We’ve had angry people throw bottles at our house and gate in the middle of the night. We’ve had people spray paint “Down with Nick” on our perimeter wall and burn tires in front of the gate. Although those events were stressful and scary, we knew there would never be a follow through on them. In this case however, Jovenel was being threatened by a known murderer. It wasn’t out of question to think that Micheal could follow through on his threats. Jovenel was understandably very worried.
Nick and I talked about the situation and decided that instead of calling the police (what good would that do anyways) that we would try and help Micheal out. Nick reached out to a leader in the community and had him meet with Micheal over the next two months to decide how we could help in in a healthy and ethical way. It was decided that we would give him a loan to start some commerce. We were just about to do this when things took a turn for the worse.
On Valentines Morning we woke up to Piyoup calling us to tell us there were problems at the gate. Nick got up and went straight up front. He found Micheal and his brother at the gate refusing to let our employees come in. Both were high. Micheal ensured Nick that he wasn’t mad at him but at Jovenel for not hiring him. Nick opened the gate up fully and stood there as each of our employees showed up. Each time Nick said that they needed to come to work and Micheal, slowly let them all pass. Later we found out that Micheal had actually pulled a knife on Tet when he tried to come to work.
Micheal and his brother stood at the gate threatening people for a few hours. Eventually we decided to call the police to have them come deal with the situation. Three cops showed up a bit later all crammed on ONE moto. They asked who was causing the problems and one of our employees pointed to Micheal, who for some odd reason was still standing around. (I’m pretty sure if I had an arrest warrant out for me because I killed someone, and then the police showed up when I was causing problems, I would take off). The police officers instantly recognized Micheal, pointed their gun at him and arrested him without any fight. They put him on the moto in handcuffs (yes with all three police officers) and were about to head to the police station when back up came with a police truck.
It was at this point when Nick really got stressed. Now he had two decisions to make. 1: he could choose to not press charges and let Micheal be released, knowing that the problems would still continue, but hopefully not anger his family too much. Last thing we wanted was his family to try and retaliate against us and our employees. 2: Press charges and deal with the backlash that was sure to come our way. Would it be safe for our family to stay here? Should we leave temporarily? Permanently? How many nights of “protest” would there be at our gate? How much of our personal property would get destroyed during their protests? Haiti’s such a political mess and unsafe right now as it is, why stay?
Nick debated back and forth on what to do the whole way to the court house. At this point our employees no longer wanted to be involved as they were scared of the backlash, so Nick was left on his own to make the decision. When he arrived he was informed that they were charging Micheal with murder and that his length of time spent in prison wasn’t up to Nick. His family couldn’t be mad at us as it was Micheals own decisions two years ago that landed him in prison. His trail won’t be for a few months, but he will likely get 20+ years in prison.
As for his family, especially his brother who was also causing problems right along side him, well, he found
himself two weeks of work on the farm working on our volunteer house remodel. Micheal obviously was a bad guy who we didn’t want around. But his brother, well as they say, keep your enemies closer. It may not make sense why Nick hired him. All I can say is that desperate people do desperate things. Right now Haiti is so much harder than it has been in our nearly 10 years here, and it’s about to get worse as the true effects of what has been going on politically are just now starting to set in. Nick has also had a meeting with leaders of the community since then to talk about what happened. Essentially everyone except Micheals family wants us to be here and appreciate the work that we are doing. We will still be giving the loan to start commerce to a member of Micheals family to help advance them forward. And the silver lining, the Mother of the Man Micheal shot two years ago, actually works in our butcher shop. I think it’s safe to say she was happy to see the arrest.
How are we doing? Thankfully our kids didn’t pick up on what happened that day as we do our best to not share these things with them. We have put up extra security measures to ensure our families safety over the past year due to the increasing security issues. We’ve hired an extra night watchman. The kids and I don’t leave without a male employee going with us, and Nick and I try to always go with the boys to soccer practice (Micheal specifically threatened to cause problems at practice if we didn’t give him job so we don’t feel comfortable with them being there without us). As for Jovenel, he was of course super shaken up. We gave him the following two weeks off to ensure that everything calmed down before he returns.
Why are we sharing this story when we have so many others that we keep quiet. I guess the only real reason I can give is that we think it’s important that people understand some of the stress, pressure and threats that our family has to go through in order to be here doing this work. To help you understand why job creation is so important. Haiti has never needed jobs as bad as they need now. I believe that if enough members in Micheals family had jobs, if they weren’t so desperate, these problems never would have existed. Our community WANTS us here. They see the benefits the 39 jobs we have created are doing for the community as a whole. The problem is we just can’t keep expanding and creating jobs quick enough!