Jason Wilson - Best American Travel writing 2001

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Edited and with an Introduction by

Jason Wilson, Series Editor

DOWN IN THE HOLD, beneath the deck boards, where we were denied most of the suns light but none of its fire, it sometimes seemed as if there were nothing but eyes. The boat was twenty-three feet long, powered solely by two small sails. There were forty-one people below and five above. All but myself and a photographer were Haitian citizens fleeing their country, hoping to start a new life in the United States. The hold was lined with scrap wood and framed with hand-hewn joists, as in an old mine tunnel, and when I looked into the darkness it was impossible to tell where one person ended and another began. We were compressed together, limbs entangled, heads upon laps, a mass so dense there was scarcely room for motion. Conversation had all but ceased. If not for the shifting and blinking of eyes thered be little sign that anyone was alive.

Twenty hours before, the faces of the people around me seemed bright with the prospect of reaching a new country. Now, as the arduousness of the crossing became clear, their stares conveyed the flat helplessness of fear. David, whose journey I had followed from his hometown of Port-au-Prince, buried his head in his hands. He hadnt moved for hours. Im thinking of someplace else, is all he would reveal. Stephen, who had helped round up the passengers, looked anxiously out the holds square opening, four feet over our heads, where he could see a corner of the sail and a strip of cloudless sky. I cant swim, he admitted softly. Kenton, a thirteen-year-old boy, sat in a puddle of vomit and trembled as though crying, only there were no tears. I was concerned about the severity of Kentons dehydration and could not shake the thought that he wasnt going to make it. Some people get to America, and some people die, David had said. Me, Ill take either one. Im just not taking Haiti anymore.

It had been six weeks since David had made that pronouncement. This was in mid-March of 2000, in Port-au-Prince, soon after Haitis national elections had been postponed for the fifth time and the country was entering its second year without a parliament or regional officials. David sold mahogany carvings on a street corner not far from the United States embassy. He spoke beautiful English, spiced with pitch-perfect sarcasm. His name wasnt really David, he said, but its what people called him. He offered no surname. He said hed once lived in America but had been deported. He informed me, matter-of-factly, that he was selling souvenirs in order to raise funds to pay a boat owner to take him back.

David was not alone in his desire to leave Haiti. In the previous six months, Haitians had been fleeing their country in numbers unseen since 1994, when a military coup tried to oust Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was president at the time. Haitis poverty level, always alarming, in recent years has escalated to even higher levels. Today, nearly 80 percent of Haitians live in abject conditions. Fewer than one in fifty has a steady wage-earning job; per capita income hovers around $250, less than one-tenth the Latin American average. Haitians once believed that Aristide might change things, but he was no longer in power, and the endless delays in elections, the recent spate of political killings, and the general sense of spiraling violence and corruption has led to a palpable feeling of despair. In February, the U.S. State Department released the results of a survey conducted in nine Haitian cities. Based on the study, two-thirds of Haitians approximately 4,690,000 people would leave Haiti if given the means and opportunity. If they were going to leave, though, most would have to do so illegally; each year, the United States issues about ten thousand immigration visas to Haitian citizens, satisfying about one-fifth of 1 percent of the estimated demand.

To illegally enter America, Haitians typically embark on a two-step journey, taking a boat first to the Bahamas and then later to Florida. In the first five months of 2000, the United States and Bahamian Coast Guards picked up more than a thousand Haitians, most on marginally seaworthy vessels. This was twice the number caught in all of 1999. Late April was an especially busy time. On April 22, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued 200 Haitians after their boat ran aground near Harbor Island, in the Bahamas. Three days later, 123 Haitian migrants were plucked from a sinking ship off the coast of Great nagua Island. Three days after that, 278 Haitians were spotted by Bahamian authorities on a beach on Flamingo Cay, stranded after their boat had drifted for nearly a week. By the time rescuers arrived, 14 people had died from dehydration; as many as 18 others had perished during the journey. These were merely the larger incidents. Most boats leaving Haiti carry fewer than 50 passengers.

Such stories did not deter David. He said he was committed to making the trip, no matter the risks. His frankness was unusual. Around foreigners, most Haitians are reserved and secretive. David was boastful and loud. Its been said that Creole, the lingua franca of Haiti, is 10 percent grammar and 90 percent attitude, and David exercised this ratio to utmost effectiveness. It also helped that he was big, well over six feet and bricked with muscle. His head was shaved bald; a sliver of mustache shaded his upper lip. He was twenty-five years old. He used his size and his personality as a form of self-defense: the slums of Port-au-Prince are as dangerous as any in the world, and David, who had once been homeless for more than a year, had acquired the sort of street credentials that lent his words more weight than those of a policeman or soldier. He now lived in a broken-down neighborhood called Projet Droullard, where he shared a one-room hovel with thirteen others the one mattress was suspended on cinder blocks so that people could sleep not only on but also beneath it. David was a natural leader, fluent in English, French, and Creole. His walk was the chest-forward type of a boxer entering the ring. Despite his apparent candor, it was difficult to know what was really on his mind. Even his smile was ambiguous the broader he grinned, the less happy he appeared.

The high season for illegal immigration is April through September. The seas this time of year tend to be calm, except for the occasional hurricane. Last May I mentioned to David that I, along with a photographer named Chris Anderson, wanted to document a voyage from Haiti to America. I told David that if he was ready to make the trip, Id pay him $30 a day to aid as guide and translator. He was skeptical at first, suspicious that we were working undercover for the CIA to apprehend smugglers. But after repeated assurances, and after showing him the supplies wed brought for the voyage self-inflating life vests (including one for David), vinyl rain jackets, waterproof flashlights, Power Bars, and a first-aid kit his wariness diminished. I offered him an advance payment of one days salary.

Okay, he said. Its a deal. He promised hed be ready to leave early the next morning.

David was at our hotel at 5:30 A.M., wearing blue jeans, sandals, and a T-shirt and carrying a black plastic bag. Inside the bag was a second T-shirt, a pair of socks, a tin bowl, a metal spoon, and a Bible. In his pocket was a small bundle of money. This was all he took with him. Later, he bought a toothbrush.

David opened his Bible and read Psalm 23 aloud: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death