Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American

What I found was that I knew a lot about Haiti. How can I forget Toussaint L'
Ouverture, the first Black republic, the Duvaliers, poverty, and all the other snippets
of information I picked up while growing up in Barbados and living here in the U.S.
But what did I know about Haitian culture, the [people]. I must confess...Very
little.

I have always felt...that Haiti represents a piece of Africa that the English speaking Caribbean had lost through colonialism --  a certain pride about Haiti's  African cultural dept -- Voodoo and all --. Most  books I found on Haiti were either about  the dry-bones history of Haiti or it's internal strife or misery. This book Restavec, satisfied my search beyond any thing I might have expected.

Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-class American. An Autobiography by Jean-Robert Cadet. Though not suggest in any way as  typical. It at least enligh-tened me about this facet of Haitian culture. By now we're used to child slavery stories coming from India, Thailand, Africa, and the like, but in the Caribbean...I was
astonished.

Cadet candidly and [descriptively] delivers this true story of his life as a Haitian slave child, or restevec. (English translation, "staying with") and as a result of this life of servitude, and the dreams that haunt him to this day. The twist and turns of his life in his rise to middle-class status in America. Our focus here is on his life in Haiti as a slave child.

This true biography is a heart felt well written piece that reads like a fictional story. I must sincerely tell you. It brought me to tears. Those of us who search for required
information for our writing tend to develop a scanning habit -- a snapshot of a page --
as oppose to reading word-for-word. It's all the rush to gather the needed information
With this book I found that difficult to do.

Jean-Robert Cadet is the product of a union between a white man and his Haitian
cook. This man called Philippe brought Cadet to the care of Florence a dark-skinned
Black woman who he paid to raise him, after his mother died. In a continuing decep-
tion to conceal the product of this illicit union. But Cadet seem to draw Florence's ire
because of his light skin.

Florence admired white and lighter skinned people, and at the same time resented
the fact that she wasn't one of them This discourse, from what I gathered from this
book ran in the Haitian social fabric of the day. When professing all things good or
of value the word "blanc" meaning white was evoked or personified, e.g., "my word
is blanc," Florence would say in reassuring a vendor from whom she requested
credit.

"Sometimes during a beating she [Florence] would say to me, 'Don't think you're
better than I am because your skin is lighter than mine.'" Cadet describes his typical
day starting at five-thirty in the morning: I picked up my bedding from the kitchen
floor, filled the bath tub, collected Florence's chamber pot [poe]...after breakfast he
made a trip to Ecole du Canada...while two students raised the Canadian flag
everyone pledge allegiance to Canada. Oh Canada land of our forefathers...every
afternoon the flag was lowered with the same ceremony.

I knew three groups of children in Port-au-Prince" the elite, the very poor and the restevecs, or slave children. Children of the elite are recognized by their light skin and the quality of their clothes. They are encouraged by their parents to speak  proper French, instead of Creole, the language of the masses.

...children of the poor have very dark skin...eat from calabash
bowls with their fingers...they squat in underbrush and wipe with
rocks or leaves...restavecs belong to well-to-do families...

Since the emancipation and independence of 1804, affluent
Blacks and mulattoes have reintroduce slavery by using children
of the very poor as house servants. They promise poor families
in faraway villages who have too many mouths to feed a better
life for they children...

These children loose all contact with their families...Restavecs
are treated worst than slaves...they do the jobs that hired
domestics, bonnes will not do...at maturity, restavecs are
released into the streets to earn their living as shoeshine boys,
gardeners, or prostitutes.

This book will take you through a rollercoaster of  emotions from some of the
sickening descriptions of what this young man had to do. To the heartless
rejections that pervaded his young life. This included, but not limited to his
father and Florence, the woman charged with his care.
 

Florence was leaving for New York, and Bobby, as she called him became very
concerned about his fate. It was not so long ago that two of his restavec friends
were abandoned by their benefactors. Without even a good bye, they were turned
out onto the streets. As Florence and her entourage filed into the waiting cars, a
sense of even greater finality rushed into his thoughts. As they pulled away he
received a waved of the hand from Florence as he ran after the cab crying "Maman,
Maman! Please don't leave me!"

Cadet was sent to live with Florence's mother and would eventually reconnect with
Florence again in New York at the age of fourteen. Under more equal circumstances
His father Philippe though ashamed of him never abandoned him to his fate.
This is quite the exception to the rule in the saga of the life of Haiti's slave children. I
think that's in part, what Cadet is trying to convey here.

At the writing of this book "...there're 250,000 restevecs in Haiti -- slave children who have no hope of ever becoming educated..." even in a democratic Haiti. Enslavement of children being condoned by people whose fore-fathers were  them selves slaves.