My experience with Haitian immigrants

Between the ages of 19 and 21, I served in two French-speaking congregations - the first in West Palm Beach and the second in Brooklyn. This was 1987 to 1989, when a wave of Haitian immigrants came to the country to escape the political turmoil in their country. Most went either to Florida or the NY/NJ area. I had done really well in my three years of high school French at WCHS, with the late and extremely lamented Mrs. Sarah Jo Thurman, and this was an opportunity to do mission work without leaving the country. Turns out that high school French is not quite the same as Haitian Creole, but, after two years of daily exposure to the language, I became conversational. In my New York congregation, I was one of only five non-Haitian members out of over 300. I developed a deep love, and admiration, for the Haitian people and their culture.

Many of these folks had risked their lives on rickety boats to reach America. They had good reason to leave, as the Duvalier family (a father-son dictatorship) ruled ruthlessly and cruelly over their own people. I will never forget a conversation I had in Florida with a man, probably in his 60’s, who had witnessed his adult son being killed in the streets by the machetes of the Tonton Macoute - the Duvaliers’ secret police. As he was telling me the story, his own mother, who had been silent up to then and had to have been at least 90, leaned forward and said - in a deep, foreboding voice -“Sang est le couleur d’Haiti.” Blood is the color of Haiti.

The Haitians I knew considered themselves incredibly lucky to live in the United States. I worked among them daily, translating for them and helping them do things like fill out job applications. Those people were workers, let me tell you. Many of the Haitian immigrants I knew had two or three jobs yet maintained their joy of life and cheerful dispositions - and their warm, welcoming attitudes toward me. They were patient with my efforts to become more fluent in their language, even as they were doing the same with mine. Rarely have I felt as loved and accepted as I was by the members of La Congregation Francaise Centrale de Brooklyn.

In both locales, families from the congregation took turns feeding me on Sundays after services. I remember one family that was well-off introducing me to Haitian delicacies such as lambi, deep-fried conch meat that is very pricy in the coastal areas of the U.S. where you can’t even find it and which I still love (though, alas, from afar, as it is hard to get in Tennessee). Most families were not so well off, and some were impoverished, but they still shared with me what little they had. Every meal started with beans and rice, usually followed by pikleez, sometimes just called salade, which consisted of pickled and julienned carrots, cabbage, and peppers. Pikleez had a very strong flavor, and I never quite acquired the same taste for it as I did for lambi. Fried plantains were a popular side dish. I ate a lot of griot fritailles- spicy, fried pork nuggets. I bought a plate of griot fritailles and plantains at a Haitian restaurant during my recent visit to Brooklyn. I also ate quite a bit of goat, especially when invited to family barbecues.

Know what I didn’t eat?

Dogs and cats. Because Haitians don’t eat dogs and cats.

Now, I had a very good friend in Brooklyn who was Cambodian, and he ate cat every chance he got, because it was a part of his culture. “Cat is very good, my brotha,” he would say, “It makes my heart rejoice.” But he did not go around catnapping people’s pets and eating them. This friend, by the way - his name was Sophan - had barely escaped his home country with his life and had seen most of his family killed by the Khmer Rouge.

All these people I have described had risked everything to reach the “land of the free,” where they could live their lives and support their families and be treated with dignity and respect. Just like the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, almost all of whom are here legally and are productive citizens of their new community.

All this insane, ridiculous, malicious slander being tossed around about them, solely to stoke up racial hatred and anti-immigrant hysteria in order to gin up votes for Donald Trump, an American Duvalier, is going to get some of them killed. Shame on you if you repeat it; shame on you if, without any proof or any knowledge of these people and their culture, you believe it.

What we give to the poor, the Haitian proverb says, we lend to God.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.