Summary

“I wake up at 5am and go to sleep at 9pm. Everyday I carry 10 buckets of water, scrub the floor, cook, carry children to school, wash, and they beat me regularly. I love school - I would like to go to school.” Stevenson Lubain

Household

Address: Delmas 75, AMACHU
Stevenson Lubain is 11 years old. He is not going to school. His mother’s name is Michael Pierre Louis. But Stevenson is living with anther family, so he’s a Restavek (slave) child. He was born the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, and still lives there.

Living conditions

OVERALL SITUATION
“My father abandoned me since I was baby. I don’t know him, or ever see him. I have one brother. His name is Peterson Lubain. He is not going to school. I am not going to school because my mother can’t send me and she can’t feed me. That’s one of the reasons she sent me to other family. I don’t feel well because I am working hard where I am living. I wake up at 5am and go to sleep at 9pm. Everyday I carry 10 buckets of water, scrub the floor, cook, carry children to school, wash, and they beat me regularly. I love school - I would like to go to school.
FINANCES
My mother doesn’t doing anything to make a living. She asks people for help sometimes, and they give her things to eat. My mother is a beautiful woman but she is unlucky.
Stevenson’s mother: “I am doing nothing to make a living. I am looking for a job but I can’t find any. I don’t have a house to live. I am living in my friend’s house. Where I am living, there is no toilet and nowhere to put dirty water, garbage and sewage. There is not electricity in the house.
EDUCATION
Stevenson: “I never go to school, so I can’t read and write.”
HEALTH
I am sick in my eyes, I can’t see well. I wasn’t born with this kind of illness. But since I am growing, I get it.
FOOD
I don’t eat regularly. I eat sometimes one time a day because where I am living they don’t give me food to eat.. I eat rice sometimes without peas because I don’t eat the same food as the people I am working for. They treat me bad.

Community information

In the area, there is purified water. A bucket cost 30 gourdes [$81 cents], and the water we use to wash is a dirty and it cost 5 gourdes. I am not permitted to drink the pure water because it’s expensive. I drink the water that cost 5 gourdes. I have to drink it because I don’t have choice.
Education system and opportunities
There is a school nearby; its name is College Universel D’Haiti. It cost $550Ht [$78 US] per year. It is located in Delmas 41, about one mile from my house.
Legal Political
This zone is very safe. There is police, and never something wrong happens in the area.
Holiday, Celebration, and party
I never celebrate any party in my life. Even church I never go.

Personal qualities

I am gentle. I respect my mother and the people where I am living. I am respectful. I never take something not belonging to me. I am not obedient, I am lazy. I don’t want to work because of my illness,. I love to play football but I never have chance to go to play with my friends. I like to watch TV but I don’t have time to do that. My famous artists are Arnold, Jackichen and Niko. I love the way I am. But I don’t like my laziness. My habits are: playing football and watching TV. I always sleep on a chair.
DREAMS
I would like to become an engineer. I would like to go to school. I want to read and write. I don’t want to change anything in my way.

Sponsorship plan

Immediate needs:
Food, health care, toys to play
Development:
Go to school, rent a house for the family
Send child Stevenson back to his own family
Dreams:
I would like to become an engineer and lawyer.

Restaveks

According to UNICEF, as many as 300,000 Haitian children live apart from their families in unpaid domestic servitude. Although the treatment these children endure varies, this practice is generally regarded by international human rights groups as a modern form of slavery.
Many of these children are forced to work endlessly, with no time to attend school, play, form friendships, or rest. Physical and sexual abuse is common. About three quarters of these children are girls, many of whom end up pregnant from rape during adolescence. This usually leads to their being forced from the household often with no place to go but the streets. Almost all these children, boys and girls, grow up emotionally wounded and illiterate.
They are used until they are used up, run away, or become too big to control and are turned out to fend for themselves. If they survive, they grow up to fill the poorest economic strata of the poorest nation in our hemisphere.
A child living in servitude is often called a restavek, a Creole word that literally means a “stay-with.” The word restavek has come to be a foul word in Haiti, an insult one would use to say someone is worthless. And this is how restavek children generally feel.
(From Beyondborders.net)

Interview details

This interview was conducted by Cajuste Jean Louis and typed by Sophia Jean Baptiste. Date: August 18, 2008