40, various work
After immigrating to the United States as a child, Frantz lived in the U.S. for over twenty years. Due to a fight with another man, Frantz was imprisoned and then deported to Haiti. At twenty-seven years old, he returned to a country he could barely recall. We interviewed Frantz on three occasions from 2013 to 2015. The first time, Frantz was seemingly at death’s door. He often lost his voice as he struggled to finish sentences and took slow, drawn-out breaths. The second time we spoke, he had made a remarkable physical recovery. In our last conversation, though he had been deported thirteen years prior, he still struggled to reconcile his American and Haitian lives.
2013
Imagine: Not being able to see your family. Not being able to work, to earn a living. Walking on strange streets. Looking around, people looking at you strangely. Everything is strange. How many years can you be strange?
I was born in Haiti on May 16, 1975. My childhood in Haiti wasn’t torturous or anything like that. It was just a regular poor peoples’ life. Country life. Animals and things. Chickens. But we ate food regularly. The house was in the countryside. A two-room house. About ten people there. My earliest memories are all blended faces, just mixed up. Relatives. Kind faces. Caring faces.
I don’t know how old I was when my mom left for the States. She and my dad probably went together, but they separated once they got to the States. I’ve gone over it a million times in my mind. My mom ended up getting married to another guy. My dad went and lived with another woman in New York City. He died there when I was about fifteen.
So when someone gets a chance to go to the States, the first thing they do is send for their kid. My mom went to the States and she sent for me. Before that, her dad, my granddad, got to the States and sent for his daughter. It’s just a domino effect like that until everybody gets out of here. But not everybody wants to stay in the States, and not everybody goes. They say it’s too cold.
When I first came to the States, a man chaperoned me and took me around. And then I lived with my mom and some family in a house, growing up, going to school in Florida. I graduated from Miami North Senior High School.
I liked to travel when I was in the States. I went to art galleries, touched paintings that were worth $300,000 or $400,000. I educated myself. I liked Indiana Jones. I liked to discover things. I liked archaeology.
From four and a half years old until I was twenty-seven, I was living in the States.
THE WAY I GOT DEPORTED STARTED WITH MICHELLE
The way I got deported started with Michelle. I met Michelle at a movie in Fort Lauderdale—Jurassic Park. She spilled my popcorn on the ground, and we bumped heads when we both tried to pick it up at the same time. It was the making of a good story. It turned out to be a tragedy.
We exchanged phone numbers. She lived in Colorado. I got kicked out of my aunt’s house in Ft. Lauderdale for running up a $2,000 long-distance bill to Colorado. I got sent to my grandmother’s place, and I ran up another bill for like $4,000 there. My parents found out what was going on, that I wanted to be serious with Michelle. So they said, “If you guys want to be serious, be serious.”
I decided to go to Colorado instead of running up phone bills. It was December. Her dad, Steve, he’s a good guy, a psychotherapist. He picked me up at the Greyhound bus station. I didn’t know what I was doing in Colorado. It’s freezing. I lived at her dad’s place for a while, went jogging with him at the Broadmoor resort. Nice place. Then I got my own apartment with a roommate.
Then I got into trouble. Street fight. Parking lot of the apartment. Police got called. My roommate and I got into a fight with a military guy. This guy, he was just around, socially. The fight was over a girl named Nancy. She was spreading rumors, “Oh, Frantz is my boyfriend now.” Not true. I suppose this guy thought he was her boyfriend. And just being macho, being a tough guy, he hit me first. That’s the truth. I told the judge that—“He hit me first.” And he told the truth, too. But the truth did not set us free. Because it’s also true that I hit him in the face with an ashtray. And he bled, severely, from the head and the nose.
I had a lawyer, a state public defender. I was almost able to get mutual combat, which just means fighting. But the judge was very strict. Two black guys. Conservative Colorado. We didn’t go to trial. At the pretrial conference, the district attorney was like, “Judge, this is a waste of time. Just send these guys to jail and get this over with.”
I pleaded nolo contendere.1 Plea bargain. Assault. Not even assault —conspiracy to commit assault. The public defender told me, “Take six years. You’ll do three.”
So I went to jail. Sentenced six years. The other guy told the truth and was charged, but after about twenty days in jail, he got out. You know, a military guy, he had a lawyer and stuff like that. I ended up doing eight years. Immigration hold. It would have been six years, but I was detained for two years by Immigration.
My parents, both of them, were naturalized citizens before 1982. There’s a law that says if both your parents are naturalized citizens of the United States before you are eighteen, then you are the beneficiary of their naturalization because you are a minor. So I fought for a while. It worked for a while.
Then the Immigration Department sent a letter that said, “OK, Frantz, make a decision. Do you want to go to Haiti? Or you’re going to stay locked up.” I said, “Well, send me to Haiti.”
YOU HAVE NOTHING
To get deported, you have to go to Oakdale, Louisiana.2 You leave from Oakdale at 9 o’clock in the morning. You’re put in cuffs. Miami is the last stop in the States. From Miami, you come to Haiti.
You have nothing. No street clothes. Just a prison jumpsuit, a couple letters in your pocket, and your legal box of documents. And you lose your legal box on the way because you’re in handcuffs, and it’s the marshal guy that’s carrying it for you. After a while, he gets tired and drops it off someplace.
The marshal guy walks with you. You don’t have any handcuffs on your legs. The marshal said to me, “Frantz, you’re a pretty cool guy. Why’d you end up in jail?” I said, “You’re a pretty cool guy. Why’d you end up a marshal?” We had a couple laughs.
I was put on a plane, then Haiti. The marshal stayed on the plane. Haitian police were at the bottom of the stairs, put me in some zip-lock type of handcuffs. While the Haitian police were putting the handcuffs on me and other guys who’d been deported, I saw a lot of pots and pans in the middle of the road. I’m seeing things boiling, but not like regular food. I’m looking at this thing, it’s all like black and purplish looking, and so I ask somebody, “What is that?”
And they told me, “Well, that’s blood. Once they kill the goat or they kill the pig, they collect all the blood and cook it, and then they cut it into pieces like a cake and sell it.”
I thought, Wow, that’s not good. It smelled awful. I don’t think that people are supposed to eat blood, you know what I mean? I see people eating it, so to them it’s okay. But to me, it’s unbelievable.
They tell you to get on this bus. The twenty-six of us were transported to another jail. My legal box never shows up. It stayed at the airport, I guess. All those memories. All those years of letters. I had money from the jail in the States, about $300. In jail, I got a degree in working with children, handicapped children. It all got lost in my legal box. Everything was lost.
To get out of jail in Haiti, it takes patience. And money. My mom came to the jail in Haiti, something that she didn’t do in the States. She pulled strings. She had friends in high places.
When I walked out of jail, I thought I saw freedom, a new life. I walked right into the open air, the free space, and talked to people. “Hey, what kind of country is this? Where’s the movie theaters?” “Movie theaters? You must be rich.” “Rich, no, I’m poor. Just like you.” “To go to the movies, you have to be rich.” “Where’s the McDonald’s?” “There’s no McDonald’s in Haiti, buddy.”
There’s no manual. There’s no instructions. At night, it’s dark. There’s no electricity. You have to find your way around. I didn’t speak much Kreyol. Luckily for me, I caught on quick. But unluckily for other deportees, sometimes they don’t. Some recidivize, some can’t handle it. Some die in a few days. They do armed robberies. Obviously, desperate times call for desperate measures.
You get poorer by not working. You lose weight by walking so much. Your family, after a while, tells you, “Hey, I don’t have no more money.” Like right now, I need money to eat, and I can’t because my family is saying that they don’t have any money right now. “Wait till next week, will ya?” And I can’t. Can I wait a week to eat?
Twenty years later, you’re still a deportee. On the block, you’re not called your name. You’re not called “sir,” “mister.” Still called “deportee.” When you first come back, it’s okay because you know that’s what you are. But when you work toward being a better person, you would think that other people would work toward changing their mentality. But they don’t.
IN THE HOSPITAL, YOU PAY FOR EVERYTHING
Now, I’m sick. Even though the blood results are not in my hand, I feel like maybe I’ve contracted H.I.V. because I hear there’s a lot of it around. I finally got a friend to help get me into the hospital. In the hospital, you pay for everything. I don’t get food and medication because I can’t buy anything. The operation I need, they might do it for free because my condition is getting critical.
I have to fight my way through it. I don’t want to die here like this—weak, naked, hungry. It’s the worst way to die: weak. I want to be strong again. So I just rest and take medication. If I wasn’t strong, I probably wouldn’t make it this far, right? If I make it out, I’m going to help out other deportees because it’s hard living in the States for twenty-something years and coming to end your life like this.
This was not the plan I had for my life. It was a sorry life, a sad life because it was unsuccessful. Being deported. I guess you just come out here to die. Deported to death.
2015
I remember that you guys gave me a ride to the hospital. My hemorrhoids became so infected that the inflammation and the swelling was causing me not to be able to go to the bathroom. I had a fever and I was losing my appetite. So it was a really scary thing. An intestinal tract infection. So the doctor suggested an operation.
I needed to get some help, so I called Loune from the Partners In Health organization that I used to work with. I worked there with handicapped children for about a year or so. I taught the kids how to speak English, how to use spoons and to feed themselves. So it was a really good experience. Loune is the chief of staff over there. Her boss is Paul Farmer. Paul tried to show me some techniques to resolve the problem. But when those techniques didn’t work out, Loune said, “Let me take you to a doctor who can either do an operation or give you some treatment.”
But when we got there, the doctor told me it is going to cost me 35,000 gouds. Do you know how much that is in U.S. dollars? That’s about 1,000 U.S. dollars.3 I don’t have 1,000 Haitian dollars. Loune said don’t worry about the money, because she was going to pay the bill for me. It was really good to think of myself as someone who deserved that kind of help.
Getting that sick was like a spiritual awakening. You know when you have some type of near-death experience? And you’re fighting to hold onto life? You have these moments where you’re praying, “Oh please God. Get me out of this and I’m going to be such an angel and I’m going to become a preacher,” and this and that. I had moments like that. I was thinking about all these years of not seeing my friends, my family. They don’t even know where I am, dying in that situation. I was like a dog, dying by the wayside and nobody caring or knowing about me. Mostly I was thinking about my family.
After that treatment, it really got better. The doctor recommended that I stay away from certain kinds of foods and spices. And I did. I quit smoking for the most part. That’s helped a lot. So here I am today, completely hemorrhoid free. No more intestinal tract infection, but I still occasionally take medication to make sure it doesn’t reoccur.
Honestly, I think I feel so much better because I was able to get support from people who knew me as a good person. I think that was a good thing psychologically because I had a lot of anxiety, depression, and stress that was really dominating me. But I think what made me feel really better was not only the medication, but knowing that I had support from these people who appreciated my work and appreciated me as a person.
PORT-AU-PRINCE. IT’S CRAZY.
Port-au-Prince. Whoa, I don’t know. It’s crazy. What do I hear? What do I see? What do I smell? You smell so many different things: the trash, food vendors on the street, the smell of burning meat and frying chicken and things like that. A lot of noise, a lot of clamor. For example, you hear people always selling things, walking around with things to sell. Some guy is walking around with a refrigerator on his head like, “I got a refrigerator to sell.” It’s just so much to take in, so much to hear, so much to see. I try to keep myself in an isolated area where I am not so much bothered by the environment out here.
Out of all the cities I have been to in my life, from Florida to Colorado to Ohio, Mississippi, Washington, this is the most unique city. It is hard to imagine how someone is able to survive these cruel and unusual conditions. And I really do mean unusual. Trying to find something to eat is kind of like having to hunt for food. You have hunger pains. It’s always hot and sticky. Having to get from one place to another is always a hassle, takes hours. Some place that should take a couple of minutes to get to, but because of the traffic, it’ll take hours. It’s uncomfortable. That is the gist of it. But you have no choice. I have to walk everywhere I go, so you just have to deal with it.
Describing it would take hours—how people live out here. There’s nothing interesting to do. It’s very bland, very boring, very depressing. There’s no fun, nothing to enjoy. No Six Flags. No miniature golf. It’s just dirt and heat and bad water and that’s about all there is. I don’t have fun. You really have no time for fun. Poor people really don’t relax. They just hang around and have a few laughs by the roadside or in the neighborhood. The richer people go to the beach or whatever. But I don’t. I really can’t afford to, you know.
We try to make the best of the situation that we can.
As you can see, I sleep on the floor since I don’t have a bed. Here in this neighborhood, there’s a lot of vegetation and there’s the ocean right behind you. So when it rains a lot here, you get a lot of these insects, and one of those insects was a centipede. Last week, it was really raining. One of them crawled into the house and lay where I make my bed area. In the middle of the night, I felt something bite me on my thigh. I jumped up and lit my phone, thinking, Oh my god. But I paid it no mind because I was thinking, What harm can this thing do?
The next day, it gets all infected and swollen and painful. I went to a Haitian doctor, and he said, “Well, you gotta just take some painkillers and some antibiotics.” So I go to another hospital, but I couldn’t afford the amount of money that they were asking to open it and clean it, so I just left it alone. I’m dealing with it the best that I can. The pain really drains me. It takes a lot of energy when I have to go somewhere. It’s really difficult for me to sit, so I have to spend most of my time standing, you know? It’s really uncomfortable, but out here, you have to be strong to survive, so I’m just trying to deal with it. Hopefully it’s not something that’s going to end up killing me.
I’VE LIVED IN MANY NEIGHBORHOODS
I’ve lived in many neighborhoods. Here in Delmas is pretty laid back, middle class.4 I’ve lived in upper-middle-class neighborhoods, which is a little more stressful, a little more expensive. And I’ve lived in the ghetto neighborhoods, like Cité Soleil, which was much more enjoyable.5 You get a feeling of excitement and adventure there, but it turns into danger once there are things going on like the coup d’état of President Aristide.6
At the time that I was living in Cité Soleil, Aristide had returned and guys with guns were on the streets trying to take over the government and put Aristide back in power.7 It got out of hand. It was 2005 to 2008. There was a political uprising and all kind of difficulties. The movement was like an armed street gang, supporters of a political movement that’s called Lavalas.8 They were maintaining the movement through violence and pressure and threatening government agents, and it was really cool to meet some of those characters. They went down in history as the big-time fugitives of Haiti, the wanted men. I used to sit and talk to the guys like this. It was always interesting to listen. And as it turns out, these characters now only live in my imagination, because they’re all dead.
The things that I was seeing, they hurt me, to see people being burnt alive or women being shot to death because they were spying or something like that. I’ve seen a lot of cruel things. Seeing an innocent person being killed because they are a relative to a gangster or something like that, that was always difficult. But you had to adjust because these were times of war. It was a like civil war, you know what I mean?
In Delmas, it’s pretty quiet. But I’ve been hearing gunshots and a lot of ambulances and things like that during the night. In the morning when I get up, I hear guys in circles having political discussions about who is going to be the next president, how the country is going to become so much better.
Here’s a story. This probably started around the election time at the beginning of August. I had a friend—well, a friend or an enemy, I don’t know what it was—but he lived near the house that I rent. A young guy, younger than myself. One day he asked me to go help this guy’s political campaign by posting his photographs on the walls and spray-painting his name on buildings and stuff like that, and he was going to pay us. I’m telling the dude I don’t get involved in things like that. I am not into politics. And he says he’s not into politics either—he’s just out to get a bit of money. So I’m like, Well, I’ll think about it.
I didn’t give him a quick response, so he went and got somebody else. They went out and were hanging the guy’s photographs on walls and spray-painting and stuff like that. And one morning I wake up to his aunts, his cousins, his father screaming, “Rudy’s been shot to death.” According to what the witnesses were saying, some guys came by with ski masks and heavy guns, what we would consider to be a drive-by shooting. I’ve been able to find out that another candidate had given a group of guys guns and paid them to stop guys from posting photos of other candidates. The result of that is that this guy ends up getting killed. And it’s funny—if I had gone with him, maybe I might have been a victim myself, you know?
No one has been identified. There’ve been no suspects arrested or anything like that. His brothers and his father, I’ve noticed since he’s been dead, everybody just stays drunk. Really, really drunk. He was an essential part of their household. So they just try to stay drunk to avoid the reality.
I WAKE UP TO THE SOUNDS OF MY CHICKENS EVERY MORNING
My original home is in Port-au-Paix. In Port-au-Paix, I don’t feel as tired as I do when I am in Port-au-Prince. It’s much more peaceful. I have my own place. I don’t have to rent. I have access to water right near my place, the local river, and I can bathe. It’s not a dirty river like some places here in Port-au-Prince. This place is much cleaner—flowing water over the rocks. It’s cool, refreshing water. It’s like going to the beach, and it’s in my backyard.
I wake up to the sound of my chickens every morning about 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock in the morning and I go feed them. I take it seriously because chickens are a good source of meat, especially when you don’t have funds to purchase food. You can just get a chicken and clean it and it becomes a meal. It’s a good resource.
I go to the woods to have that feeling of being connected to nature and learning how to survive in the outdoors. It’s much less stressful than in the city, where you don’t get shade from the trees, you don’t get running water. I don’t have to commute to any place, because everywhere you need to go is in walking distance. So I’m trying to build my life out there and I think that once I am able to, I am going to attempt to stay there more often than in Port-au-Prince.
I was born here in the city, because in the countryside, it’s difficult to get a birth certificate. So the parents have to come to the city to have the child in order for them to get the birth certificate and get it registered. So I was born in the city, but my family is from the countryside. And since I’ve been back in Haiti, I’ve been able to find family members and meet the ones that I forgot and the younger generation that I never knew. It has been interesting to share my experiences in the States. They think it is really cool. They are always asking me about my tattoos. It is amazing how the older generations, like the grand uncles and grand aunts, remember me. They are like, “You’ve been gone for like twenty-something years, but you’re back!”
I was able to pay for my land in monthly installments. I did most of the work myself, gathering friends and relatives, young boys who were willing to help get the blocks put up, get the doors made, and stuff like that. To get a house built out there, maybe cook some food and offer people some incentive to help you out. I’m thinking that the wisest thing for me to do is create a stable living environment in the countryside where I can afford to stay. The reason I come to Port-au-Prince is because I feel that it is easier to find employment here than it is in the countryside—although it has been awhile since I’ve been able to find work here either.
You don’t find enough income in those areas in the countryside. There’s not much to do. No electricity, no Internet. It’s very difficult. You live in the forest, just live off the land. You eat coconuts. You make a little farm and grow sugar cane and sweet potatoes. I don’t know how to farm. I can raise chickens because all you have to do is feed them and put them in the cage at night so wild animals don’t eat them or they don’t get lost in the woods.
It’s difficult for me because I haven’t done that all my life, so I come to the capital city where it’s easier to find work that has to do with computers and management and stuff like that. Somehow I manage to earn enough while I’m here so I can survive out there for a while until my funds are depleted and I have to come back here. But I do plan on making a farm, and hopefully in the next year or two I’ll be able to harvest and have food. I’m starting really small because I don’t have any money to start any other way.
I DO ODD JOBS
One thing you learn real quick in Haiti is that only the strong survive. I’ve had so many friends die here. Just the other day, my friend committed suicide. He just couldn’t take it. The pressure that is most difficult here is not being able to eat three meals a day like we’re used to in the States. If you’re unemployed, you don’t have money, and if you don’t have money, you can’t buy produce.
Generally on a Sunday, you have to give it your best shot to try to get something to eat because you spent all week not eating well. So I save everything that I can throughout the week to make a real special meal on Sundays. It’s called ramen noodle. It’s one of my favorite things. It’s the cheapest and quickest thing I can make. I used to eat it when I was a kid in the United States. You just boil some water, put it in there, and you’re ready to go.
I walk because I don’t have a vehicle that transports me wherever I need to go. I do odd jobs. I run errands and help people, someone who needs to fill out an application that’s in English or something like that.
I try to think of ways to create employment not only for myself but for people here in Haiti. My newest idea came from my experience in Port-au-Prince, watching manual laborers on the streets of Delmas breaking their necks to get day work from those guys in the upscale areas, whether it be for a day or two or just handyman jobs, gardener’s jobs, or to wash the boss’s clothes. Some people make it and some people don’t. The ones that do make it, it doesn’t last very long and they’re usually cheated out of their money. There’s never anything official that says, “This is how much you’re going to get paid,” or, “You’re on a regular schedule.” It’s all chaos, it’s not organized. It leaves people worse off than having no work at all.
I imagined a way to organize a little bit so it can be less of a hassle to them and also gives me some type of employment, like an agency that provides services in the upper-class neighborhoods where they’re building hotels and they’re repairing things. They always need people but they can’t find the people, because some of the people here don’t know where to go to get the jobs. Some are not computer literate, so they don’t know there are job offers on the Internet.
I’ve made myself available to teach Haitian people how to use the household appliances that are in those new buildings. For example, the Marriott hotel. It’s brand new. It’s very nice. And it’s got washing machines, but all the buttons are in English. So what I’ve decided to do is teach people how to use a washing machine so they can be qualified for these janitor and housekeeping jobs. So that’s what I’m working on now, what I hope will improve the quality of life for all Haitians.
I MISS MY LIFE
Since I’ve been here, I’m a stranger in a strange land. I don’t think I have what you would consider to be friends. You greet people because it’s polite and you have to do certain courteous things for the elderly or children or whatever. But as far as having friends or considering someone to be your best friend? No, I don’t have anything like that. I feel like I’m dying. I mean, I’m usually very weak. I don’t know if it’s stress or depression, but I just don’t feel as strong as I used to when I was in the States.
On a scale from one to ten, I think my chance of getting back to the United States is one. But I grew up watching things like Rocky—movies that are about something seemingly impossible, but somehow by the end of the movie, there’s a victory, someone has overcome an obstacle. So maybe it is an obstacle to get out of Haiti, but I think one day I will be able to, because I really miss my little sisters, my real friends. I miss my life, you know? I would like to go, just to reminisce and spend some time with old friends and pass by the grandparents. They’re in the States and I’d like to see them. My first-born child, she’s like almost eighteen now. She’s got a boyfriend and everything. And I haven’t been there. From jail to Haiti it’s been almost twenty years. But I still feel as if America is a good place. But I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.
I think it is unfair to take a guy out of the situation where he spent his whole life. I was twenty-seven years old. I lived in the U.S. my whole life from the time I was four and a half. I had just gotten engaged to the daughter of a prominent doctor. Everything was ahead of me.
So I had a lot of opportunities to be somebody, and because of a fight with a guy … And to be treated like just a regular refugee and have your permanent resident papers taken away and be sent back to Haiti, I think that was unfair. I think it was cruel and unusual, to tell you the truth. I’m American, brother. I mean, I don’t feel Haitian in my system at all. I mean, the blood in my veins runs red, white, and blue. I am forty this year. I feel like I’m sixty, but I’m forty. I feel like I have a lot of years left, God willing, to live out my dream. And I have no other dream but the American dream.
You have to really get to know Haiti to love Haiti. There are places in Haiti that are really nice, places I enjoy like the countryside, living in the mountains. Whether the United States is better than Haiti depends on how you define “better.” Better that you can eat? That you can go to a store? That you can find a job? Instead of having to be unemployed for all your life here? I mean, okay, economically, sure it’s better. But what about when you get to the heart of things like your family members that knew you when you were young and your loved ones that you’d never seen before?
I like the fact that I really know that I’m Haitian and I feel it and I see it. I see people that look like me and have the same nose as me, the same ears as me. I feel good about it, to see those people. But feeling Haitian in like a social way? No. Culturally, I don’t feel it. I still feel like an American. You know, I like things like baseball and apple pie. Burger King and Olive Garden. I know it’s a long shot, but I hope one day to make it back home because Haiti is not my home. No one loves me here. So I hope to click my heels one day three times and say, “There’s no place like home” and be back in America.