Child Slavery-Haiti 2010


Imagine for a moment that your next-door neighbor gets a sudden human addition to their household. You notice a child, six to seven years old, appearing frequently outside their home, engaging in a myriad of yard chores. This child is unusual for at least two reasons. He never smiles or laughs. And he bears no resemblance to the previously childless couple that resides next door.

Over time you observe this little boy taking on the chores that, at least previously, you had always seen your neighbors attending to. Every time you smile at or attempt to engage the little boy in conversation, he averts his eyes and rushes away. You resolve to ask your next-door neighbor to clear up the mystery child.

Before you have an opportunity to ask them, you rise at dawn one morning to check on a ruckus in your back yard. Your dog is at the fence barking at the strange boy, who is standing with his back to you and carefully folding some kind of thin cloth. A little irritated at being awakened so early, you call to him and inquire what he is doing at such an ungodly hour in the back yard. Sheepishly, shyly, he turns an obviously bruised and battered face towards you and answers, “puttin’ up my bed sir.”

Surprise segues to shock as you realize that this brutally damaged little boy has been sleeping in your neighbor’s rusted out tool shed! When you attempt to question the boy as to the nature of his hideous wounds, again he runs away. Now what do you do? Really, what would you, the reader, do?

Would you walk next door and demand answers to explain the child’s injuries? Would you call Child Protective Services or the local police? Or, would you go about your daily routine and do nothing?

What if it was your neighbor down the street, instead of your neighbor next door, abusing this precious child? What if the abuse occurred in a neighboring city? A neighboring state? What if the child happened to have dark skin or spoke a different language? Would any of these reasons make it easier to ignore the atrocity, the crime?

Isn’t that precisely what we are doing in this country, “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, when we turn our heads and our hearts away from the 300,000 plus restaveks, child slaves, in Haiti? Does Haiti being another country and a different culture make this brutal cruelty acceptable in America? Really? Is it because this impoverished nation is 700 miles from our East Coast that we can sleep soundly and ignore the cries of these embattled little angels? Most troubling to this writer is this heart wrenching question, “if these child slaves were white, would our country, our churches, our politicians, our pundits, and our military, stand by and allow this affront to human decency to continue?”

Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Rising from the gutters and back alleys of Port au Prince is a chorus consisting of millions of children’s voices, dead and dying, crying out to an Unseen God and an uncaring world for help. Where are the good men? Where is God?

Listen to their cries
Learn of their needs
Love them with your actions! www.hski.org