Restavek to designer
Four bone jarring hours of driving along rugged goat tracks leads to a tiny rural community on Haiti’s La Gonave island where there is a girl with a dream to be a fashion designer. It’s not the sort of place you’d expect to find a girl with such an aspiration. It’s donkey country with very little infrastructure and certainly no fashion shops. Sonite, the aspiring designer is crouching on the ground smashing one rock against another and collecting the tiny pieces of crumbled stone. She dusts five small fragments, gathers them in the palm of her left hand, throws them in the air and flips her hand over to catch some of them on the back of it.
"I like playing jacks with my friends,” says Sonite as she demonstrates how the game is played. "It is one of many things I like doing. I also like drawing, especially luxury boats.”
Fourteen year old Sonite is tall and thin and like many young girls in Haiti, wears her hair tied in neat rows of little braids tied off with white and blue clips. She has just finished her French grammar class and explains that it is her favourite subject but one day when she finishes school she would like to make fashions. "I’d love to be a dressmaker. It’s what I like. I’d like to help my community to create fashions.”
It’s an aspiration though that was almost lost when Sonite went to live with her godmother.
"When I was six I went to stay with my godmother (father’s cousin) in Port au Prince. She promised to send me to school in Arcahaie. I kept waiting to go to school. For two years I worked in her house cleaning and looking after the house. I never got to go to school.”
"I had to sweep and mop the floors. There were six people living with my godmother and I had to look after them. My godmother’s daughter and four nephews lived with her. Only her daughter helped me with the work around the house. Sometimes I was scared in the house. Of the bad spirits at the gate.”
Like many poor countries, child exploitation is common and widespread in Haiti. Exploitation ranges from child trafficking and smuggling, sexual abuses to domestic and forced labour.
UNICEF reports about 10 per cent of children in Haiti are involved in domestic work away from their families. And three-quarters of the children working are girls. Children involved in domestic labour are also known as restaveks (Creole word meaning "to stay with”)
"Restaveks typically come from low-income families in which parents or caregivers lack adequate resources to care for their children, and so send them to live with other families in the hopes that they will be given a better life,” explains Debbie Landis, head of child protection at World Vision’s Haiti Emergency Response.
"In most cases restaveks are forced to work long hours without reprieve on behalf of the families with whom they are living, and are often provided with insufficient food, clothing, and other basic necessities. Restaveks also face an increased risk of experiencing physical or sexual abuse, and are provided with only minimal, if any, access to education.”
Landis warns that the risks for children are greater in the post earthquake aftermath.
"Even before the earthquake, there were about 380,000 children who had lost at least one parent, and of this number about 50,000 were orphans. The significant loss of life and mass displacement from the earthquake has put greater strain on families and also increased the number of orphans and vulnerable children."
"My father realized that I wasn’t going to school and brought me back home. He got some help from World Vision so I could go to school here at the L’ecole National de Tamarin (Tamarin National School) – a school World Vision helped to build.
"My father promised me he will get the fees for school in Port au Prince so I can go back there. But I prefer to stay here in my community because here I feel at home. And in Port au Prince I feel like a stranger."
Sonite has friends who have had the same thing happen to them – each were promised schooling but ended up cleaning homes and doing household chores every day.
"It’s not fair that some kids get to go to school and others don’t. As long as I’m alive I’d like to keep going to school. I want to keep learning, because without this you’re nothing."
Many girls in Sonite’s community have aspirations but most families struggle to afford to send their children to school.
In Haiti about 85 per cent of schools are private and many families cannot afford the fees and the indirect costs such as school uniforms and books. Instead it is common to find children at home working or caring for younger children instead of going to school. Education quality is also a problem in rural areas where schools struggle to attract and retain teachers.
"I’m happy when I realize I’m living with my family. I live with my father and three brothers. It makes me happy. But I’d like Haiti to be like the US, Canada or France. I’m ok with the trees, it’s natural. But I’d like the place to be better lit,” says Sonite.
"The way we live – in poor conditions – I imagine that people in countries like Canada, France live better than us. For example, in their free time people in those countries might be able to enjoy themselves in a way we can’t. I’d like to be using a computer to see what’s going on in the world but I don’t have one. I know about these things because I learn from other people. But television would also be a way to see what’s going on in the world.”
Sonite’s school day is almost over, but after school there is homework and then after this household chores. It’s the way it is here. "There is not much time for relaxing and recreation. We work most of the time. Even kids have to work.”
