JEAN PIERRE MARSEILLE

44, journalist/fixer/translator/salesman

Jean Pierre is a father who lives in Port-au-Prince.

My name is Jean Pierre, but my original name is Jean Marseille. My father’s name is Waldeck Marseille. My mother’s name is Jocelyn Pierre. After I was deported from the United States back to Haiti in 1994, I took the name Jean Pierre to change my identity. Some people call me JP. My Facebook name is Johnny Pierre. Money G is another name. That’s a street name a friend of mine, Teddy, gave me because I’ll always be hustling. That’s it for names.

I had to give myself a birthday, too. My parents say I was born in 1971 in the spring, but they’re not sure what month or day. They say around March, so I picked March 24. Twenty-four is my lucky number.

My wife’s name is Guerda. Her first kid’s name is Esperanta, age twenty-one. She’s going to school and lives in Santa Domingo.¹ Together my wife and I have David Jean, our oldest. He’s in twelfth grade, his last year at classic school. Only two more classes and he’s finished with high school! I’m going to try to send him to the university in Santo Domingo with Esperanta. Then there’s Medjine. She’s fourteen and going to seventh grade this year. After her is Donald. He’s ten and in sixth grade. Annesamma is eight. She’s also going to the sixth grade this year. Geyonce, we call her Gigi, is seven. She’s going to the fifth grade this year. She’s my wife’s sister’s daughter. Her mother died of cholera in Cap-Haïtien after the earthquake.² Our families were close, so I adopted her. I had no choice. Out of her whole family, we are the only ones that have a house and have it together enough to take care of her. She’s my daughter now. I gave her a birth certificate. I consider her one of my own. And finally there’s little Diego. He’s four. He’s what we call our mistake kid! My wife and I didn’t plan on having any more kids, but after the earthquake, the two of us got together, and you know, it just happened again. When we we found out, it was so shocking that I cried. One more responsibility. I was so worried. How was I going to make it with all these kids?

ONE DAY A WOMAN CAME UP TO HER HOUSE WITH A BABY IN A CARDBOARD BOX

I grew up in Cap-Haïtien, raised by my grandmother, but the truth is I wasn’t even born here. I remember when I was six, seven years old, and I asked my grandmother why does everybody in this house call me etranjè?³ And they didn’t say it behind my back. They said it like it was a good thing. It meant that I was from somewhere else.

My grandmother told me that one day a woman came up to her house with a baby in a cardboard box. About a year before that my father and mother had left on a boat looking for a better life. Both my parents were born in Cap-Haïtien. They’d been neighbors. They hooked up, got married, and made my older brother, Jaco. But things were rough then. This was 1970. The Tonton Makout would kill you for anything. So my parents sold what they had and put some money together and were able to buy passage. They left Jaco in Haiti. Their final destination was the United States, but to get to the United States at that time, you had to first go through the Bahamas.

Turns out I was in her belly when she took the boat, what people in the U.S. call a banana boat. Haitians used to take them to flee to the United States. These boats were always overfilled. Sometimes the boat would hold eighty people. Sometimes as many as a hundred. Sometimes they would throw people out in the middle of the sea. I guess at that time my parents were taking a chance. But they did make it to the Bahamas. They were only supposed to stay there for a month. But because my mother was pregnant, they ended up staying longer. They couldn’t leave. She couldn’t go on a boat to the U.S. pregnant like that.

So I was born. My mother had me in a hospital in the Bahamas. My mother once told me that my birth certificate had my little footprints on it. That’s what they do in the Bahamas. They place the footprint of the baby on the birth certificate. Technically, I’m a citizen of the Bahamas. They changed the law in 1970 and said anybody born in the Bahamas was a citizen. If I could prove this—I don’t have a birth certificate anymore—I would be in the Bahamas right now. But I never saw this birth certificate.

After I’m born, I’m a problem. They can’t go to the States so they decide that they are going to work and rent their own place in the Bahamas. My father worked in the cane fields, and they saved a little money.

After six or seven months, my mother still wanted to go to the States. Her only dream was to get to the United States. I slowed her down. They decided they’d both go, but my mother went first.

There was never a plan to bring me because I was too young. The boat was too much of a risk. So they decided to send me back to Haiti to stay with my grandmother until they could get themselves situated in the U.S. But they couldn’t just ship me back to Haiti. My father paid a woman to take me. I don’t know who she was. After my mother left, my father was lonely. He wanted to go chasing after her. So he fixed a little bed in a cardboard box—put my papers and me inside—and handed the box to that woman. She took me on a boat and smuggled me back to Haiti. I was eighteen months old. That was my first deportation.

When that lady brought me to my grandmother, there was no birth certificate in the box. That woman probably stole it and resold it because that was a big business. Everybody wanted to leave Haiti at that time. But everybody knew where I was from and being an etranjè was good for me. To be from another country other than Haiti was always better. The Bahamas were good. To have an actual Bahamian inside the house was like a gift. So I got special treatment.

I grew up on a farm in real countryside with little houses made out of bamboo. The place was part of the commune of Limonade and within walking distance to the larger city of Cap-Haïtien.⁴ There was a lot of dirt and dust and no roads. I used to ride a donkey to school. I lived with my mother’s mother, my brother Jaco, my uncle, aunties, and all my cousins. I didn’t have needs for anything. I ran around there on the land, and I played with the cows and goats and all the animals. I drank natural milk straight from the cow. I was a spoiled kid! My grandmother super-loved me, and my grandfather always brought me fruit. It was the best time in my life. Even if I didn’t have the United States glories—the fancy cars and the big money—when I was a kid, I had all the family love that I needed. My grandmother made me feel special, and she treated me really good.

She raised me up. My grandmother was the head of that household. She used to get on the donkey to go downtown to sell the crops her husband had harvested from the farm. She was a highly respected person in that community in Limonade because she had a lot of land and was my mother’s mother. My mother was a hero because she was one of the first persons to leave Limonade to go to the United States.

And so the days went on. But my grandmother had always assured me that one day I would leave to join my original family. At that time my parents were living in Belle Glade, Florida. And they had another boy, my brother William. My mother used to send cassette tapes. That’s how I first heard my mother’s voice.

Finally, my mother sent for Jaco and me. I was around ten or eleven. When it was time for me to go to the United States, I went and hid because I didn’t want to leave my grandmother. I didn’t want to go. I loved my mother, but I didn’t know her as a person. I was in school. I had some friends in Limonade that were really close to me. I knew my wife even. When we were kids we used to walk together to school. I didn’t know I was going to marry her! But we’d rendezvous every morning.

My grandmother found me. She knew my hiding spot in the big forest near our farm, near the mango tree. When I stole something from the house or did something bad, I’d go there and hide for a couple of hours. My grandmother always knew that place, but I didn’t know she knew until then.

She said, “Come and sit down on my lap.” And she sat me down, and she spoke to me. She said, “You know, out of everybody in the world, I love you most. I think I love you even more than your mother, but I’m getting old, and this country’s not getting any better. It would be better for you if you go to the United States. Maybe you can get a better life. And one day you can come back and see me and bring me nice gifts because I know you love me.”

I loved my grandmother dearly. That’s what made me go. My grandmother, she was the only one. I remember it so well. A couple, a man and a woman, came and took me off the farm and brought me to the city. Port-au-Prince was so beautiful back then. I remember walking on Champ de Mars with this couple.⁵ They were selling fried meat and bananas. The streets were crowded. There were all these fun things for kids to do. They had clowns in the streets, and people were riding bikes. The streets were clean. That was my first time I ever saw concrete. I saw the White House.⁶ It was my first time seeing something that big in my life. It was so beautiful. Then, the man said, “Tomorrow, we’ll be leaving for Florida.” You know how it is when you’re a kid. They never explain anything to you. And I’m like, “Leaving where? I’m not here? This is not the United States?”

And the next day I got on a plane for the first time in my life. This couple were pretending to be my parents. I remember that the lady, the stewardess, was really nice. She said “If you want to throw up, just grab this bag, and do like this.” Now, I’m really excited to see the big America. I’m thinking, Where am I going? What will my mother look like? What are my brothers like? What’s the United States going to be like? Is it going to be like heaven?

Well, it turned out that mother owed the couple a lot of money, $5,000. They held me in Miami under house arrest until my mother paid up. But that special day, months later, two women and one man came to the door. I gave the man a handshake, and I kissed both the women. I knew one of them must be my mother because of the happiness in their faces. One of them said, “Ki moun nan nou se manman ou a?—Which one of us is your mother?” I really didn’t know. In my mind, I’m like, Eeny, meeny, miney, moe. I picked the one that looked most like my grandmother. Lucky me.

My mom said, “You remember me!” She started to cry. I started crying, too. I was relieved, and very, very happy. I hugged my mother. I thought it was going to be the best time in my life, but I was on a long road. Because nothing’s ever perfect. How many times do I have to learn this? When I got to Belle Glade, things weren’t great. My parents had split up. My father was violent. My mom was always busy trying to help us survive, working two jobs. She didn’t know when I went to school and when I didn’t. She never said, “Let me see your report card,” or “How did you do in school today?”

I remember being so lonely. Kids beat me up all the time because I was Haitian and couldn’t speak English very well. “You stink, Haitian. Take the banana boat back to Haiti.” “You’re dumb.” “You’re ugly.” Nobody wanted to be my friend. They changed the way I thought about myself. All those people, all those bad names, made me feel less than I was. Eventually I got into the drug life. I was fifteen. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to buy a car. I wanted to have friends and girlfriends. I wanted to correct all the reasons I was picked on. I wanted to take away all the Haitian style.

You could make good money selling. I had other jobs, putting people’s groceries in bags and stocking shelves, but that’s $3.25 an hour at minimum wage. I was so tired. I had to go to school. I’d get off work at 3 a.m.

The first time I sold I made $400. Sometimes, in a day, I could make $600 or $700. Then, I didn’t get beat up as easily.

I watched TV and found out the way to dress and act. I spoke English. I knew slang. When I was eighteen, I bought a Cadillac. I got the new hairstyle. I dropped out of high school and made a name for myself. I became cool and very violent. I got addicted to cocaine. I was depressed. I had thoughts of sucide. I didn’t have anybody to give me advice. Only my brother Jaco who worked shit jobs, he tried to set me straight one time, but I didn’t listen.

THE GUY SAID HE HAD A WARRANT FOR MY ARREST

I remember it so well. By then, I was twenty-two. Around four o’clock one day, a U.S. Marshal comes to our house in a four-door gray car and knocks on the door—boom boom boom boom. My mom goes to the door. The guy said that he had a warrant for my arrest. My mother said, “What for?” The guys said for “a failure to appear for driving under a suspended license and possession of marijuana.” A five-dollar bag of weed. The Marshal said, “Don’t worry. Just a simple violation charge.” When I went to court that Monday, I was afraid, but deportation was nowhere on my mind. The judge told me that, personally, he’d give me time served, but that I had an immigration hold. I thought, Man, this must be a mistake. I have my green card. I called my mom. She found my green card and brought it to court.

Because, you see, you couldn’t be deported under Reagan if you had a green card. He was president when I arrived in the United States in 1982. I was twelve when I first came to Florida. I always tell whites from the U.S. that I meet, “You know who my favorite president is? Ronald Reagan.” And they can’t believe it. “Why do you like Ronald Reagan, man? He was a terrible president.” Not for us! Haitians in the United States love Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan made it clear—if you had been in the U.S. for over five years, you could have a green card; they would not deport you. I got my green card with the help of Ronald Reagan, but Bill Clinton became president in 1994. And Clinton’s new deportation law hit me like a rock. It turned out you could be deported if you had a green card. If your crime was bad enough.

And my crime was bad enough. I should say crimes. Because my deportation was not based on a single crime. It was an accumulation of crimes. But the fact is you only need one minor felony to get deported. When I appeared in court on the possession, the judge and an immigration official told me they’d been looking for me since my first major charge—a felony for throwing a deadly missile, a brick, into an occupied vehicle. But the reason I got deported was because of a conspiracy charge. It’s called “conspiracy to deliver or purchase cocaine within a thousand feet of a school zone.”⁷ They charged me with that, but they didn’t find any drugs. I was selling drugs, but I never got arrested for selling drugs. First it was the possession charge and then I got roped into the whole conspiracy thing. So they had an immigration hearing and I lost. They put me in the county jail. But they said if Immigration didn’t come to get me within a month, they had no choice but to release me. I asked the guard, “Does Immigration not come sometimes?” He said, “Sometimes they don’t.” So I was counting every day. Twenty-nine days later, a guard called out: “Jean Marseille.” They came at the very last minute. Immigration shackled my feet and wrapped a chain around my waist. For the first time, I really felt like a prisoner. They transferred me to three other county jails until I finally got to Oakdale, Louisiana, a federal detention center where there’s a federal administration department and immigration court where they keep people that are about to get deported. I saw these big barbed-wire fences. It was also the first time in my life I saw snow.

I THOUGHT I WAS AMERICAN

I didn’t think about Haiti very much after my grandmother died when I was in the eighth grade. I didn’t go back for the funeral. I couldn’t. And I’d never gone back to visit. Never. Not once after I came to the U.S. I thought I was American. I pretended to be anyway. But once I was in Oakdale, I got interested because I knew I had no chance of fighting the deportation. I started studying up on events in Haiti. From what I heard on the news, Aristide had gotten pushed out of the country and he wasn’t being allowed to come back.⁸ His supporters were getting killed in the streets. I also read that the Makouts were back and out there raping and shooting people.⁹ I tried to understand the situation there, what kind of environment it was. How could I live in a place with so much violence? Was there even any electricity? What about the roads? And I also heard from someone at Oakdale that deportees sent there were getting shot when they arrived at the airport.

While I was waiting for my deportation hearing, my mom sent me a letter and told me something amazing. She said she went to Haiti with all this pèpè and made a killing.¹⁰ And do you know what she did with the money? She bought me a house in Port-au-Prince. Seriously. The house I live in now. She knew I was going to get deported and did her best to set me up here. She sent me the address of her cousin, and told me to contact her when I got to Port-au-Prince.

After a couple months, I had my deportation hearing. My public defender spoke well but didn’t know much about me because I had only met him the day of the hearing. And I had a criminal record, so what could he do? The judge sentenced me to deportation.

In the middle of the night, U.S. Marshals came and got me and another Haitian guy, a friend of mine named Geral. Once again, I was shackled. I felt so stupid. I wasn’t a dangerous person. Why should I be shackled? They put us on a small, private plane like a Learjet, a U.S. Marshal’s plane. It was not a commercial flight. There were three Jamaicans—dreads¹¹—on the plane. They dropped the Jamaicans off first. But only two were taken off. And I’m like, “Yo, man, why you here? I thought you was a Jamaican?” Then, for the first time this guy spoke Kreyol, he says, “I’m Haitian, too.” And I said, “All this time we’re together on the plane, you’re hiding that you’re Haitian?” He said, “I have nowhere to go.” He was terrified. So was I. I was thinking, “These Haitians are going to kill us.” They weren’t supposed to deport anybody to Haiti at that time because Haiti was considered unstable. It was so bad that they had already stopped commercial flights to Haiti. But they brought us on a U.S. Marshal plane. These Americans were ditching us.

When the plane touched down, the U.S. Marshals grabbed me and the other guy, and took us with our cuffs on down the ramp. It was kind of like when Obama gets off the plane with the Secret Service, walking down the stairs, waving. Except when I got off the plane in Haiti, I saw dead bodies on the tarmac. You think I’m joking? The marshals took us into the Haitian police station in the airport and said, “These two guys were deported.” The marshals didn’t speak Kreyol, and there was no translator. The Haitian cops didn’t understand English. So I translated. My Kreyol was at least understandable. It wasn’t as great as it is now, but I left Haiti speaking Kreyol and I had always spoken Kreyol with my mother. The marshals took the handcuffs off and were like, “Here you are.” They handed the three of us to the Haitian cops and took their handcuffs back with them. They went back to their plane. I was getting very scared now. And these Haitian cops started asking us for money.

Before I had signed my name agreeing to deportation, the U.S. Marshals gave me ten bucks. That’s the money they give to everybody that is getting deported. I also had a little extra money that my parents sent me from my account stashed under my balls. It was like a hundred bucks total. I said, “Hey, listen, I’ve got family in the government. I’m of the family of Madame and Mr. Charles Cherenfant. Charles Cherenfant was my mom’s cousin’s husband, a guy that used to work at the White House with Duvalier, an old Makout. He had been shot once and was famous for having only one hand. Because Aristide was gone, the Makouts were in power again. “Oh!” One cop heard the name. “Let me see the address.” He looked at the paper I had carried, and said, “You. You move to the side. I know the family.” He sat me down. I pointed to Geral, “He’s with me.” And so me and Geral waited there until that officer was off work. He was so nice to me. The other guy, the dread—I don’t know what the hell happened to him.

Outside of the airport, the day was cloudy. There was smoke in the streets and soldiers. We didn’t take a car. We walked from the police station. We walked for about an hour through fields and past shanty houses. Again, I saw dead bodies. It turned night. Dark. And I’m nervous. I offer the cop ten dollars, but he doesn’t take it. I’m thinking that this cop is going to shoot me in the bushes. And if we do make it to the house I’m wondering—will this woman, my mom’s cousin, remember me? Is this cop really a good guy? Will these people accept me? It’s been eleven years since I left. All these things were on my mind.

We reached a house and the cop called out, “Madame Cherenfant. Madame Cherenfant!” My auntie—she’s not really my auntie, but I call her that—comes out. She looks at me. “You Jocelyn’s kid?” I felt like somebody who was choking that finally gets fresh air. I said, “Yeah.” Ahh, it felt really good. I looked behind me. The cop had disappeared. I never saw him again. To this day, I haven’t seen that cop again.

My auntie took us in. That first night she cooked us fish. Couple days later Geral went on his way, somewhere. Soon things became pretty tough for me. I mean I didn’t know anybody. No one at all. And Haitians were suspicious of American deportees. They thought all American deportees were killers and murderers and thieves. I had a bald head then and had a lot of gold teeth. Also, I was really fat. 195 pounds. Huge belly. Now I weigh 155, 160. People were scared as hell of me. I was the first deportee in my neighborhood.

Then my auntie began stealing the food that my mom was sending me. She’d hide it in her room. Also, she tried to give me a curfew. I just got out of prison and I have to be back at the house by eight o-clock? Remember I’m twenty-two years old. I wanted to find a girl. I was lonely. I dressed up and walked around the neighborhood, talking to people with my messed-up Kreyol, trying to get my groove on. But nobody would give me a chance.

Not long after, I met this guy named Fenix. He took me to his house and let me meet his wife and daughter, and we had a real big dinner. He made believe that I was his friend. In Haitian slang he says, “I know you done been through war ’cause you were deported, you know how to shoot a gun, you know how to do all that stuff, right?” I said, “Yeah, I can do that. I’m tough.” I didn’t want the guy to think I was a wussie. He explained the plan. It had to do with stealing gas. Back in those days, there were a lot of people selling gas because Haiti had an embargo on it.¹² There was no gas coming in, and so gas was very expensive. We were going to go to a big open field by the airport and rob some gas merchants. And you know, I was tired of sitting at home in my auntie’s house. So I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I figure I have to do something. How can I make it in this place? Can I make it as a robber? Maybe I can buy some fresh clothes and look good. Maybe I can get some money and get back to the States somehow.

The next day we park the getaway car and walked into the big open field by the airport. There was a goat track you would follow through the wild grass. Fenix stopped walking and pulled out a .38. He said, “Here’s the gun. You pull the gun out on them, and I’ll collect the money.” I had an uneasy feeling. I mean we’re talking about gasoline. If I shoot that gun, shit could blow up. I said, “Yeah, give me the gun.”

He gave it to me, and I took about five or ten steps back and pulled the gun on him. I said, “You’re going to take me home. What are you bringing me on a suicide mission for?” Fenix was scared. Remember, he thinks I’m a high-class criminal from the United States. He says, “Yo, yo, yo, calm down! I’ll take you home. Come on, man. Put down the gun.” I was shaking. I put the gun in my pants. Back in the car, I told him, “Look, I didn’t come here to die ugly.” When we got to my aunt’s house, I took out the .38, took out the bullets, and gave Fenix back the gun. I said, “Come get your bullets in the morning.” I was happy to be alive. I realized that that was not the way out.

I ASKED FOR A GIRL I’D REMEMBERED AS A KID

Three months later, I was so embarrassed about my deportation and myself that I removed all the gold from my teeth. Then I went to Cap-Haïtien for a visit to see if I could find my old friends. When I was walking around the neighborhood, I asked for a girl I’d remembered as a kid. Her parents and my grandmother used to walk us together to school. I was two years older, and we would have a rendezvous together. We would go take a peepee, and she would show me hers and I would show her mine. I didn’t have any intention in marrying her at the time. I just wanted to see an old friend. And when I first saw her after all those years, I saw that she already had a kid. I wasn’t too into that. And I was too busy trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life in Port-au-Prince.

I still didn’t have any friends. I needed some kind of support that was family, so I went back to Cap-Haïtien. My wife—she wasn’t my wife yet—agreed to come live with me in Port-au-Prince. But I had to start making a living. I had enrolled in a program they had to help deportees reintegrate into society. I learned Haitian history and some French. I knew that I needed to know where the heck I was, how to get myself out of certain situations, get information, have a conversation. I found out later that program was just a hustle, but that was okay. The little bit of French helped me get jobs. I could understand French-speaking communities.

Then came the American invasion that brought Aristide back.¹³ That saved my life. All those Americans spoke English, and I could relate. The soldiers knew I was a deportee. I didn’t have to tell them. The way I talked, the way I looked, my goatee, everything. They knew I wasn’t from here. And they didn’t know what they were doing here. People were getting rowdy in the streets and people were killing Makouts—but those soldiers were helpless. I was able to get work, and sell them boots and hustle. I helped them get their freak on, got them weed, packs of cigarettes. They’d give me twenty bucks for a pack of cigarettes. “Keep the change, man. I got you, man. Keep the change.”

Around the same time, I got my first real translating job. I went to the airport, and I saw this heavyset white guy with dark hair and some shorts on coming off the plane, and I said, “Hey, you speak English?”

He did, and he worked for NPR News.

I said, “You need somebody to translate for you?”

That’s how Money G started getting his hustle on.

IF I HAD STAYED IN FLORIDA, I WOULD HAVE DIED IN FLORIDA

If given the choice I would rather come back here a thousand times over going to prison in the U.S. In some ways now I figure it was God’s plan for me to get arrested and deported. I was either going to shoot somebody, or I was going to get caught up in some crossfire. No question in my mind, if I had stayed in Florida, I would have died in Florida. I wouldn’t have my wife and my kids, the people that inspire me, that keep me alive.

Listen, I’m shit in the United States. I’m nothing but a drug dealer, a convicted felon. So getting deported to Haiti was the best thing that happened to me. I’ve never been in trouble in Haiti. I have a clean record and a good driver’s license. I don’t steal shit from the people I work with. I don’t have no bad reputation. I’m a respected journalist who has worked with the L.A. Times and the Miami Herald. I’m working real hard so my kids won’t have to hustle. I work as a translator, but I do other types of trades in order to make it. I sell Coca-Cola drinks. I have a charcoal business—I sell charcoal made from wood for boiling water and cooking. I sell bags of water, those see-through plastic bags, you see that are sold all over the neighborhoods. Yeah, I sell water, too. Because everything costs something in Port-au-Prince. You gotta buy water. Lucky for me, I have a refrigerator and a freezer at home, so I buy gallon bags for three or four dollars and freeze them. They sell faster.

Our house is open for business. My wife sells the charcoal. She also sells pèpè¹⁴ and rice and beans out of the house. People come to her. I’m a positive type of guy. I always think I’ll be able to pull off a business. No matter what type of business I’ll try it and see if I can make it work. Every job’s a hustle. There’s a word for hustle in Kreyol. Brase.¹⁵ That word’s used all the time.

THE GROUND WAS RUSHING AND SHAKING

The day of the earthquake, I was having lunch with a writer and filmmaker. I worked with her, and she often helped me get jobs. But that day she told me that she was leaving for France, and I realized that I was going to be without work. I didn’t expect any journalists to be coming to Haiti anytime soon, and I was really depressed. I was feeling real low and hungry. And I was having problems feeding my kids. My mission that day was to get some money from Chantal to buy some food, go back home, and cook.

Chantal gave me some money and I left.

When I got home, I gave my wife what Chantal had given me, and I went into the backyard. My wife was in the kitchen cooking, and I was talking to her through the window. I was telling her that things really had to change because the situation was really hard. Then, all of a sudden, I heard something like godou-godou-godou. The ground was rushing and shaking. Everybody was home for our family dinner, but the kids—Dave, Medjine, McDonald, Annesamma—were spread all over the house.

I hit my head against the wall and knocked a tooth loose. I fell on my knees and was trying to ask for forgiveness. I felt that Jesus must really exist and this must be the last days. I’m not kidding, I thought it was the end of the world. I said my last words, “Jesus, save me. I don’t want to have suffered all this time on earth and then go to hell.” How could I spend all my time suffering on earth to then die and go to hell?

After I calmed myself down, I went looking for my wife and kids. My wife was on the floor waving her hands in the air, saying, “Jesus Christ,” I got her up and we got all the kids assembled. Everybody was fine!

We all went out of the house. We couldn’t stay in the house anymore. I checked out the house—no cracks or anything. My house is built properly. And I was like, “Wow, must have been an earthquake.” There was dust everywhere and people were yelling out “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” And people were screaming, coming out of buildings with dirt on their faces, running back and forth. Some people came out with broken legs. We had the second earthquake. Du-du-du-du. More aftershocks. More screaming. Houses were falling. People tried to save people.

A little while later I called Chantal. I had a Voila cell, but most people had Digicel phones, which didn’t work. Voila was still working. Chantal told me she was okay but she was really paranoid because she was worried she wouldn’t be able to get a flight out. Then I got a call from another journalist in the States. The word was spreading. He asked if I was all right, and my first thought was “He’s on the way to Haiti.” Immediately, I knew I had to go to the airport. I put my shoes on. I would go help some journalists and make a little money also. I told my neighbors that I would come back with a fresh car to help people, even though I didn’t have a job yet.

So I headed toward the airport. That’s when I saw the worst things. Delmas wasn’t that bad.¹⁶ There weren’t many houses really destroyed. But as I’m walking, I start seeing people with cut legs, people trapped under roofs. I stopped to help this guy grab his wife from beneath the rubble. It took a long time. I realized that I had forgotten about myself. I’m like, “What am I doing?” I have to go to the airport.

By the time I did get there, it was almost dark. The first news-people here were from China. They didn’t need me because I guess they didn’t speak English. I stood by the door waiting and then the jobs started coming. There weren’t enough interpreters. But the fact is, the situation was pretty easy to understand at first. People needed help. Everybody can relate to that. You don’t need language. It was simple. The streets were messy. We walked where we could. I was doing the translator job, but I was trying to help, too. I took the injured to the hospital. At the General Hospital I saw all these dead bodies on the ground. All over the hospital. Everywhere! There were no doctors. But there were bodies everywhere.

By the time I made it home, it must have been two days later, I was so tired. Even though we weren’t supposed to go into the houses, I went into mine to sleep. And who cares? At that time I was starving and happy to be alive.

There were so many sad people, but there were people showing each other love. The poor and the rich became one. You would see a big bourgeois guy, afraid to sleep in his mansion, and he was sleeping on the street with everyone else. We became closer to our neighbors during this time.

All the news channels were talking about violence in the streets and looting, people acting crazy. It wasn’t true. It took a month for the dirty hearts to come back. But that first week, even if you were the biggest monster, you’d have a heart. Greediness comes about because of food. You can’t really blame people.

Some bodies they only found later. I lost a lot of friends. Some friends, I don’t know where they are to this day. They never found their bodies. They just disappeared. They could be anywhere. Like my friend Teddy. He was a deportee. Two days before the earthquake, we were together. After the earthquake, I went to his house, and it was flat. I am still hoping that he comes by. “Jean! Yo, Money G!”

I’m not saying that the earthquake should have happened, but it helped me in my situation at that time. I had six or seven months without work before it happened. After it, I got a lot of work. I felt professional, working as a translator. I felt like a journalist myself. I felt like I was educated, like I’d been to college, and was helping all these people. I felt like I was living in some dream.

I get more respect here because I’m from the United States and ended up with an education. When people in my community have problems, they come to me. They say, “I need to borrow $200. My kid is sick.” I do the best I can to help them out. When people want advice, they come to me. The other day, a friend offered me $250 to fill out a letter for him from the U.S. Embassy. I said, “No, man.” I gave him a hug and did it for free. In other times, I would have taken the money, but I’m not looking to be rich. Respect is more important. I just want to be able to feed my family and pay for my kids’ education. It’s not hard to satisfy me. I have my bad days, don’t misunderstand, but I also have my good days here, many of them.