Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

But it’s like they say, God comes on a donkey, slow and steady, because on his way back into town, Toussaint Legrand saw me, and he felt certain that the good Lord had put me on that road, the road that led him right to the judge.

* * *

The Legrand family had countless cousins and distant relations spread out over almost all of the Grand’Anse; and it was Toussaint’s habit to mooch off all of them, drifting around the region in a rhythm of his own devising, his exceedingly sensitive inner compass guiding him to whichever cousin had just come into a little cash or a ripe harvest, or had won some money in the borlette , or was simply feeling generous. His cousin Selavi (pronounced “C’est la vie”) Legrand, for example, had a husband in Miami who every few months would Western Union her down a small contribution for the upkeep of his children — and within a day or two of the receipt of these funds, Toussaint would arrive on Selavi’s doorstep, looking woebegone.

Selavi lived in a village accessible only by foot, perhaps a three-hour hike from the road, which itself necessitated a hike of almost half a day from Jérémie. Toussaint’s scrawny body concealed strength and endurance, and he thought nothing of long distances on foot — what else did he have to do, after all? When he arrived in Morne Rouge, his patience did not go unrewarded: the Haitian peasant rebels at parsimony and is generous, and so it was that Selavi offered Toussaint a bowl of chicken stew and a couple hundred gourdes to buy the little men in town a new pair of shoes or to buy Marie Legrand some credit for her phone.

Back in Jérémie, Toussaint told Terry and the judge the following story:

He had been sitting after dinner, as the older men swapped bawdy jokes and the children dozed, when Selavi’s father indignantly recalled the last election. He had shown up at the polling center, he said, intending to cast his ballot for the Sénateur, only to find that the box next to the Sénateur’s name had already been checked on his ballot. Selavi’s father was a citoyen and a proud son of the revolution, and it rankled him that what should have been his choice and privilege was now an obligation. When he protested, the head of the voting center informed him that no other ballots were available. Soon other men joined their protests to his, and the situation threatened to become unruly, when a local curé, a man named Abraham Samedi, appeared.

The crowd at the voting center fell silent as Père Samedi descended from his mule. He was in his late sixties, and his hooded black eyes, set deep in his bony face, made the locals think of the illustrations in their Bibles of Old Testament prophets. Selavi’s father, well-muscled as he was, stood not much taller than five feet, and Père Samedi towered over him. He wrapped his long arm around the younger man’s shoulder. Then the men walked side by side for several minutes. No one in the crowd could hear their conversation, but they could see Selavi’s father nodding, and by the time they returned from their brief promenade, it was clear that Selavi’s father had seen the wisdom of the old priest’s counsel: that a vote for the Eagle (this was the name of the Sénateur’s political party, of which he was the only candidate) was a vote for the Eagle, no matter who scrawled an X in the box opposite the Sénateur’s photograph on the ballot. In the end, the precinct in which Selavi’s father voted turned out nearly unanimously for the Sénateur, as they always did, giving the Sénateur 312 votes and his opponent just 6.

What interested Terry and the judge particularly in this story was that neither man had realized the role of Père Samedi in local politics, nor his ardent support for the Sénateur.

And so it was that Terry and the judge offered Toussaint the first job of his young life: he was now the scout.

Back in the days when they were slaves, the judge told Toussaint, there was always a scout, somebody who went below the slave man’s radar. A kid, maybe, someone who can slip in and out of anywhere, someone who can talk to anyone. Someone who makes friends easily, can find out what the real lay of the land is. Who’s the gros neg , the big man? What does he really want or need? Someone who can find out the true story of what happened last time around. What do they really think about the Sénateur? Not a job any of those lycée kids could do — maybe they know how to read and work out chemistry problems, but they show up in Morne Rouge, deep in the mountains, they’d stand out. They don’t have Toussaint’s natural ability to talk, to listen, to make friends.

The judge had an old, beat-up motorcycle sitting in a shed, and he let Toussaint take it out on the road: one day Corail, one day Pestel, three-day trip from Dame Marie to Les Irois or deep into the mountains. Everywhere he goes, he has a cousin or knows someone who knows someone; they treat him as a friend.

And everywhere he goes, he’s coming back telling the judge the same story: not a chance in the world the judge is going to beat the Sénateur. People like the Sénateur, yes, but that’s not the issue. Problem is, the Sénateur has Bonbon, or Beaumont, or Pestel wired up tight. In Bonbon, they say, last time around, you hardly even needed to bother to vote: there was an X already in the Sénateur’s box on your ballet. You ask for another ballot, a clean ballot, they’d tell you, “So sorry, brother, all the ballots we have. You like those fingers?” In Beaumont they’d say, “Didn’t want to vote for the Sénateur myself, but I couldn’t turn down the money. Not with the price of coffee the way it is.” In Pestel they’d say, “We didn’t like the Sénateur around here, so we just stayed home. Lot of bad things happen on voting day. Funny thing is — when they published the results, seems we all voted anyway.”

The judge said, “Sounds like an uphill battle on our hands.”

Toussaint said, “I’m with you to the end, Judge.”

“Tell me something, Toussaint. You think if they voted fairly and people just voted their hearts, do you think I’d have a chance?”

Toussaint thinks it over. First time in his life anyone ever asked him a thing like that, wanted his opinion. He says, “I do, Judge.”

“Why’s that?”

“When I tell people about that road — they can’t believe it. One thing everyone wants around here is a road. I think you tell people about that road, you just might have a chance.”

A few years before I came to Haiti, the Mission decided to bring the vast Port-au-Prince bidonville of Cité Soleil under its authority. The neighborhood was said to be dominated by warlords and gang leaders, and the military operation began with a show of force: soldiers from the Mission would parade through the narrow streets in APCs, one after another, like Hannibal’s elephants. Somewhere in the middle of the procession a Uruguayan APC came under small-arms fire from gang members on roofs. Then the Uruguayan APC broke down and the Uruguayans abandoned their vehicle in panic, leaving the gang members in possession of an APC, a machine gun, and numerous small arms. The no-nonsense, hyperviolent Brazilian army had to rescue the equipment, leaving who knows how many dead Haitian civilians in their wake. It was not a pretty scene, and shortly thereafter the Uruguayans were sent to Jérémie — in peacekeeping terms, a decided demotion.

Nowadays the Uruguayans would take their APCs out on the back roads of the Grand’Anse from time to time just to see if they ran right. Once, they knocked over the wall of their own base trying to park. That was about the extent of their martial activities. Most mornings you could see a couple dozen of them out on the beach, drinking maté and playing soccer and flopping around in inner tubes.