DJENANE SAINT-JUSTE

35, dancer and choreographer

Djenane Saint-Juste is a dance instructor and teacher of Haitian culture. Djenane was born in Port-au-Prince, the third generation in a line of dancers. During the fall of Papa Doc in 1986, her mother’s house was riddled with bullets while her mother attempted to protect her. They soon abandoned Port-au-Prince for the country.

As a young adult, Djenane attended college in Cuba and lived for a while in Venezuela before returning to Haiti. She and her young son became the target of violence during unrest that occurred in 2009. Fearing for their safety, Djenane left Port-au-Prince for the diaspora permanantly, in this case, California. The diaspora is often referred to in Haiti as the eleventh département (the country has ten départements, roughly equivilant to states in the U.S.). We spoke to Djenane in Marin Country, California. She recently moved to Minnesota with her family.

My grandmother was a Rara queen in La Gonâve, an island that is off the coast of Port-au-Prince.¹ Rara is when a group of people gets together and gives prayer and song to the spirits around Easter time.² A Rara queen dances in the street and challenges other people to dance. My grandmother gave birth to my mother during one of these street processions. “Just get my baby out,” she said, and everybody who was there helped her. The story goes they grabbed the baby and kept on dancing.

Then, when my mom—who my grandmother called Fofo—turned one year old, my grandmother got pregnant again, and she sent my mom to Léogâne³ to be with her godmother. Léogâne is the Rara town in Haiti. There’s always a lot of dancing and music. Nobody taught my mother how to dance. She became a dancer by herself. She saw her mother the Rara queen dancing in the streets with others and my mom danced along with them in the ceremonies. She didn’t know the names for the rhythms or steps. She danced them naturally.

When my mom turned fifteen, she traveled to Port-au-Prince to Viviane Gauthier because she wanted to study and learn the names of the steps. Viviane Gauthier’s school is one of the most renowned dance companies in Haiti. They do traditional Haitian dance. There were other schools, but they are gone. Most of the dancers emigrated to other countries in Duvalier’s time, so we lost so much.

After two years, my mother became a teacher at the center and started to travel to dance internationally. She went to the Balé Nasyonal of Haiti and became a renowned dancer there, too.⁴ When she was twenty-three, she had me.

Things were tough economically. My father was gone, and she had to quit school and find a job in order to put me through school and to give me everything that I needed. She wanted me to go to private school, and private school in Haiti is expensive. We had to travel from town to town, from space to space, to find a cheaper house to stay because she had to cut costs. From the year I was born until my sixteenth birthday, we moved at least eight times.

As a child, I knew it was hard for my mom. If I wanted something, and she couldn’t give it to me, that would hurt her. But the only thing I wanted was to be with her.

Each time I picture my mom performing, I see an amazing human being. On stage, she was so free. She was so happy. She could be dancing eight, nine, ten hours, and she always had this big smile on her face. I thought, I want that happiness. That is the way I started dancing. They tried to put me in the kids’ company, but I wouldn’t go. I learned with the adults’ company. Viviane was a tough lady. She didn’t permit any mistakes, and she would tell you to your face, “You’re not good enough. Get out.” So I would do the steps until exhaustion. I would do it over and over and over until Viviane would say, “You’re good.”

At five, I had my first big show at the National Theater in Haiti. Viviane asked my mother if I would be able to dance onstage, and my mom said, “I think so.” They tested me, and I introduced the show. That’s maybe where I get my confidence.

After that, dancing was the only thing I desired. I never desired candy or what other kids wanted. It was the only thing I asked my mom for. “Can I go onstage? Can I go with you? Can I dance more?” I always wanted to feel that moment again on stage.

It was a good and bad time. My mom was also an activist and really involved in politics. Besides dance, she did poltical theater. They had shows that criticized the government and told people about human rights and how things should be, and I was always with her. That was how I met a lot of activists in my early life. I missed school sometimes because we had to hide. The Tonton Makout were after us.⁵

Often we went to Jacmel to hide.⁶ Everybody went to the ocean to have a big bonfire and to sing and dance. I remember saying, “Well, we’ll die tomorrow, so let’s celebrate now.” The activists’ kids would play, listening to the conversations the adults had about how this country and its people should be and what we could do, even though we were beaten up a lot by the Tonton Makout. A lot of my mom’s friends got killed. A lot of them were separated from their families, exiled.

I skipped school to be there, but Jacmel taught me something. From my mom’s friends, I learned Haitian history. Most of the history books at school were written by Europeans. They weren’t really the true stories of our home. The books said that we needed to celebrate Christopher Colombus, somebody who committed genocide, and we have to celebrate him?⁷ Makes no sense. If not for my mom’s friends, I would never be aware of the struggle we have gone through, the fact that we were colonized many times, and we had to pay for our freedom.

I became a secret girl. I never knew who the parents of other kids might be; they might be Tonton Makout. I had to learn to not tell my friends what my mom was doing or where we went when I missed school. It’s a small country. Whatever you say could put someone else in danger.

The scariest part for me was when Baby Doc was leaving the country in 1986.⁸ We were living in a small house in Port-au-Prince. The house wasn’t well made, but it was a colorful one. My mom knew I loved color. Inside, she painted it pink and yellow and green, and she told me, “Here’s your castle.” I loved it. I remember it was not even the size of an average bathroom, but we were actually happy with what we could afford.

But one day, my mom grabbed me and threw me to the floor. She lay on top of me and put the mattress on top of her. There was shooting all night long. I couldn’t sleep. All I heard was shooting and felt the weight of my mom on top of me, shaking, and me shaking on my own. It was the longest night of my life. When we woke up the next day, there were bullet holes all over the walls. Since our house was so close to the street, it was hit by many bullets. We moved after that night. Then we moved to another house, then another one. From then on, I was never able to sleep through the night. Never.

WE BUILT A HOUSE AND WE BUILT A STAGE

We saved up to buy land in Thomassin.⁹ We built a house and we built a stage. It wasn’t a fancy stage. Basic. Some people came and said, “Oh, you need a light.” They brought lights and put them on the stage. “Oh, Fofo, you need curtains!” They brought curtains. It’s nice to see people collaborate. For a while, we didn’t buy food because the neighborhood was bringing tomatoes or carrots or milk, everything.

On Sundays, we would have a big performance. Everybody in the neighborhood would bring their chairs, and all the kids performed for their parents. People would dance, have fun, and talk. We would teach the young people how to dance, sing, and drum.

We were happy in Thomassin. I always woke up with a big smile on my face. My brother ran wild in the neighborhood. We had our own garden of corn in the front of the house. We also had teas and different herbs. I remember every night we used to get our corn and have a bonfire in front of the house. To everybody who was passing, we would say, “Come!” We would have some rum going around. That’s it. No electricity. But you can see the stars. They were so bright. You felt that you could touch them. And when it was a full moon, it was like heaven. There’s nowhere else you’d want to be. Ahh, Thomassin. But you can’t be at two places at the same time. Now, I’m here. I have to embrace it.

I HEARD THAT CUBA WAS GIVING AWAY SCHOLARSHIPS TO HAITIANS

I heard that Cuba was giving away twenty scholarships per year for Haitians who wanted to go to college. I applied, passed the test to get in, and got the opportunity to go. I studied physical education and sports, not something I really wanted to do, but it was available and all that we could afford. I’m very glad I went, because I met a beautiful community there—people with big hearts, people who know what community means and are not thinking about profit or anything material.

In Cuba, I met my son’s father, Javier, who is from Venezuela. I got pregnant. I asked for a year off of school and went back to Haiti to have my baby. I was twenty-five years old. His name is Hassen. It means “good thing” in Arabic.

Javier and I married in Haiti, and then flew to Venezuela to start living. Things just weren’t right. He wasn’t the right person. But we have a beautiful son. We’re all meant to make mistakes. If something doesn’t work, that doesn’t make us a bad person, so I got on an airplane and went back to Haiti. I left Hassen with my mom in Thomassin so I could start school again in Cuba. By that time, Aristide had left Haiti for the first time, and the country was in trouble.¹⁰ There was a lot of anger, kidnapping, shooting. No food. Everybody was afraid. It was a civil war in Haiti. In December, I went back to Haiti and took my son with me to Cuba. The director of the university said, “I’m sorry, but you cannot have a baby with you on the campus.” That hurt my heart. I was like, “I want to study.” The university said, “Well, we understand, but you can’t stay in the country as a student with a baby.” One of my friends said, “Write to Fidel.” And I did.

A couple weeks later, I received a letter that they would give me a place to stay with the baby to finish my studies. They gave me two tutors and a lab with a computer. I had a place to stay close to the school, and the bus would pick me up. The community took care of my son. Every day, people fought about who was going to take care of him. They fed him, gave him a shower, and played with him until I got back. When I finished my thesis and graduated, I went back to Haiti and thought, That was the most amazing experience. My time in Cuba has stayed with me.

PEOPLE COULDN’T FIND WORK

I started working in Port-au-Prince teaching Haitian dance. There was less work for the citizens, but there was work for foreigners. They had big cars, big houses, big money. The local people who were called “uneducated” couldn’t work. They had no house and no food, and things were very difficult. People couldn’t find work even if they were qualified, so many organized together in the ghetto to kidnap, abuse, or rob people in order to be able to live. If you were a young person doing well, you were the first target to be abused, robbed, or kidnapped in order for those people to be able to feed their families.

My mom said, “Move in with me. It’s not safe. You’re at your house with a child. You’re not safe by yourself.” So I moved back with my mom, and two or three weeks after, a couple of people kidnapped a Canadian woman who was living a block from our house. A lot of people were disappearing. The gangs were sending young kids to ask for information about people living in our neighborhood. You’re not scared if you see kids in the neighborhood. You might invite those kids to your house and give them a plate of food, but there were a lot of kids asking and looking—who has a healthy life, who has cars, who is working, who is traveling a lot? Some people in our neighborhood advised us to be very careful. We always struggled to put things together, but we were moving forward. I was able to work and provide more, and my mom, too.

There was real violence. Some people in the neighborhood struggling for food came and stole my pig, but that wasn’t related to gang stuff. They were just trying to live. One time, I got out of work and people were throwing rocks at my car and into the street because there was something going on in the country. I couldn’t get out for a few hours, and my son was in school. I was in Pétionville, and my son was in La Boule.¹¹ Luckily, the director of the school kept him until 7 p.m. that night.

I couldn’t do it anymore. I thought someone would try to kidnap Hassen. What would I do if somebody came and took my son? Would I be able to kill that person? I’m not a violent person, but I need to defend my son. That fear was inside me. I talked with my mom, and she said, “Well, you have a visa. Go and stay in the U.S. for a couple years.” I’m like, “Okay. I don’t see myself killing anybody. I better go.”

I knew people in San Francisco, California. When I came the first time in 2008 to teach and dance, I had a lot of friends. Everybody in the dance community wanted to meet me. But as soon as they knew that I came with my son to stay for good, many of the friendships weren’t the same. People weren’t willing to help or understand my situation. I met people in the city who said they had Haitian roots and were always talking about Haiti, about doing things for Haiti, Haiti this and Haiti that. They put the flag out. They wore the flag all over their bodies. They even changed their names to say they had relatives in Haiti. They felt they were more Haitian than I am! But I was here struggling, and there were people who didn’t even answer my phone calls. One Haitian woman with a child, and there were people who wouldn’t even give her a hand. That was very hurtful.

Everywhere I went, they wouldn’t give me a job, because I had no work visa. I was teaching anytime anyone would let me. I was doing Vodou blessings of buildings. I was doing cleaning, any job just to survive.

I began staying with Hassen with different friends who would open their house to us. I didn’t have a car. I was living day-by-day. I had to walk miles. Because I couldn’t leave my son to find work, I had to carry him on my back. Sometimes he was so tired. He would cry on the street, “Mom, I can’t anymore. I’m hungry.” I had nothing to give him.

People that were there for me were students who barely could afford to pay for a class. Sometimes my students came with a bag of groceries to give to me, or they would pick up Hassen and take him somewhere.

I found a lady, a good friend, who was opening a dance studio in the Mission neighborhood, and she said, “Do you want to teach there?” I said, “Yes, I’d like to, but I have no papers.” But she said okay. The way we did it, she got a percentage of cash from whoever came to the class. That’s the way I started to have income. I built a dance company with the people who were really there for me.

I rented a room in San Francisco. It was a garage that they had turned into a room with a bathroom. But I loved it. The couple that was living there had two kids. One son was the same age as my son, and the husband was born the same day as me. Those people! It was supposed to be a relationship where I paid rent, and that’s it. They were feeding my son and me. All the time. They said, “Don’t buy anything. Eat as much as you want.” When I had a late-night gig, they kept Hassen. They gave him a bath and put him in the same bed as their son, like he was part of the family.

I’m so grateful for that couple. I left their house when I didn’t have enough students to be able to pay them rent. I told them, “I don’t want to stay here anymore. Someone offered me a place to stay.” They said, “Why?” I didn’t give them more details. They treated me so good, and I knew they needed money, too. They struggled, but in their struggle, they had a space in their hearts to help another family.

My experience in the United States has been strange. The people I thought would be willing to help were not the people I expected. The people I met randomly on the street became my family.

I THOUGHT MY WHOLE WORLD WAS DESTROYED

Hassen and I moved in with a student in December 2009. It was on Church Street by the trains. I was struggling so much I was thinking about moving back to Haiti. Then the earthquake happened. I had just come out of a dance class. My friend called me and said, “Djenane, are you home? Something just happened in Haiti.” I said to my friend on the phone, “Now you have me scared. What’s going on?” She said, “Go. Turn on the TV.”

I saw the earthquake. I thought my whole world was destroyed. I just sat down and started crying. Then, I’m like, No. I cannot cry. I don’t know. I need to know first. I called my mom. She said, “Hi! Hi!” I said, “Are you okay?” “Yes.” That’s it. The phone cut out. There was no more communication with Haiti.

I called a friend in the Dominican Republic who studied with me in Cuba. I said, “This is my mom’s phone number. This is all her information. Please do your best. Bring her there. Keep her with you.” My friend called her mom, a very smart lady who was living at the border of the Dominican Republic. I never saw someone so resourceful. She somehow got in touch with my mom and told her if she got to the border she would get her across. But all the streets were destroyed. People were suffering. My mom and my brother Jeff didn’t want to leave people like that.

Because of the aftershocks, my mom and my brother were sleeping outside the house. Nobody was sleeping inside. Everybody was on the street in tents. My mom, all the children who used to dance for her, and their parents were under the tents until there was no more money and no more food, nothing to eat.

So they left. A police guy gave my mom and my brother a ride to the border. My friend’s mother fed them and called me. That’s when I finally spoke to my mom. I said, “I’m gonna find the money to bring you and Jeff here.” My mom said, “Okay, but I’m not going to stay.”

The student I was living with called the rest of my student community. People that I don’t even know sent money and clothes, and the student who helped me find the dance studio asked her parents if they would pay for my mom and brother’s plane tickets to come to the United States. They sent money for both of them to come and didn’t ask for anything in return. That’s how I brought my mom and brother to the United States.

But my mom never wanted to stay here. She mostly stayed for my son because I was working all the time, and she said, “He needs love. He needs stability.” We were all living on Church Street by the trains. Each time the train went back and forth, the house shook, and my mom and brother thought it was an earthquake again. They knew it was the train, but they were very traumatized by the earthquake. They couldn’t sleep.

By that time, the U.S. government offered T.P.S., temporary protected status.¹² It is a status that the United States gave to all Haitians living in the U.S. a year before or after the earthquake.

You have to pay for your T.P.S. I had four people: my mom, brother, son, and myself. It was around $400 for each person. My mom wasn’t working. I was working under the table, doing whatever I could—a gig at the park, dancing at a party to entertain guests, taking care of kids, watching an elderly person, cleaning a restaurant—all for cash money. I had no day, no night. I never had a schedule. Whenever some work came, I went. “I heard somebody needs their house cleaned, can you?” “Yes.” “I liked what you did at that party. Can you?” “Yes!” Finally, we applied for T.P.S., and we got it.

We thought the protected status covered a lot of things, but it only gives you the possibility of working in the United States. You don’t have insurance or help to pay your rent or for food. They don’t even offer you a range of work opportunities. You need to find your own work and pay taxes. Besides that, you pay a higher rate of taxes than anybody else in the country. I thought I could go to school. I applied to graduate school and got accepted, but then I found out that I had to pay with my own money because you are not eligible for scholarship or financial aid under T.P.S.

I got my first apartment ever in the U.S. Every day, we found things on the street. My mom and I would carry chairs or mattresses on our heads, or people brought us furniture. Finally, the whole house was full of things, and we didn’t pay for any of it. That was our first start in America. We were legal and able to work.

I’M NOT A CITY PERSON, EVEN THOUGH I GREW UP IN THE CITY

I ended up in Marin County because the rent is cheaper. Also, I love trees and water. I’m not a city person, even though I grew up in the city. I like to stay close to nature.

My mother and I teach dance and music and drumming together. We go to different public and private schools in San Rafael, Petaluma, San Francisco, and Oakland. She still doesn’t want to stay. When she got T.P.S., she still couldn’t work because she didn’t know enough English. Wherever she applied, they said, “No, you don’t speak English. We don’t want you,” or “You’re not that young.” She felt frustrated as a woman who had been working all her life and never depended on anybody.

One day, one of the children we teach came up to me and said, “Djenane, my father said that Haiti’s the poorest country in the world.” I said, “Yes. Your father is right. Haiti is the poorest country in the world.” He looked at me. I felt like he was going into his emotions, you know, thinking. “But what do you think?” I said.

And he said, “I really love that song your mom teaches. I like the drumming. I learned that Haiti fought the best army in France. I think Haiti’s a rich country that has a lot of culture. I love Haiti.”

I said to myself, The kid gets it. His father is the most important person in his life. He listened to his father. But he has his own opinion after the work we did together. He’s questioning now, and not only saying, “Haiti’s a poor country.” Haiti is a poor country. I cannot lie about that, but what else? He had the answer for me. I just listened.

For many years, all over the world, they have been feeding ideas about Haiti, that the Vodou is bad, that the people are bad. Even Haitians tell their children to not associate themselves with Haiti. Haitian people are scared of their own culture. The brainwashing tells you that your culture is no longer good. That’s the same thing as telling you that your color is no longer good, the shape of your face, your hair.

That is why wherever we go, we teach dance and music. That is what we must do as part of our journey in the world. Wherever Djenane and Fofo go, we are supposed to give back and transmit that culture to others.

Now I’m moving to Minnesota. I think I offered California what I had to offer it. Now it is my time to go to Minnesota. And when it’s time for me to go somewhere else, I will go. Maybe from there, I’ll go back to Haiti or to Africa, who knows. For me, as I was telling you, the most important thing is to live life fully and to be able to build something completely. Not halfway. Not just an inch. Maybe I’m too ambitious, but I want to be able to develop myself and give as much as I can until I cannot anymore.

It’s like this game in Haiti where you sing and pass this seed from one palm to another in a circle. You’re sitting down and looking everybody in their eyes, which can be very intimidating, but you are building something together. The song goes, Bag la soti nan men manmanin/Men li rive nan men papa’l. It’s like, “The seed or the rings came from mother and go to father and make it go around and around.” Between mother and father there is a whole generation. The meaning is that you’re going between generations as you pass the seed. It’s an exchange. You get to be you, and I get to be me, but at the same time, we’re part of the circle. When you pass the seed, sometimes it isn’t so smooth, but that’s life. Nobody came with a book that told us exactly who we were. We’re on that journey to discover who we are and to be a part of the world. But at the same time, we have to be aware of the person next to us and make as much good as we can. It’s hard trying to be the best human being you can. Everybody makes their mistakes. That’s life. Being human.

Maybe me coming from Haiti, going to Cuba, Venezuela, and now here, maybe there’s meaning behind it. Maybe right now people don’t understand, but in a few years, the next generation might be powerful enough to understand and take action and be proud to say, “I’m from Haiti,” or “Haiti is a poor country, but what else?” Who knows, huh?