So after the months in hell, we found an apartment, a cousin of mine in the DR purchased a fridge, a stove and two mattresses for us (with the money from our Angel) things were more expensive than I thought but at least we had the basics. To this day Nate and I are still sleeping on mattresses on the floor. All of our non-essential money is sent back to Haiti to help those we left behind.
Now as I said I wanted to go back to the states I have aunts and cousins (some quite well off) galore in the US and in Canada, but when I asked if anyone could give Nate and I a room until we go to our feet… nothing. So we decided to just cross the border and settle in DR until we could go back to Haiti or maybe back to the US. (both Nate and I are American).
We had to renew our passports, if you have an underage child, you have to present a file with pictures of the child showing them growing up sort of a timeline (did you all know that?) and as Nate’s father wasn’t with us, he had to send us a notarized letter saying I was allowed to travel with my child. Unbelievable.
We went to our old house to say goodbye to the neighbors, Nate distributed his toys amongst his friends, Izrael, James, Wenley, Akim, Liyoo, Anderson, Ted, Pipo. I distributed books and DVD’s, called up municipal libraries to pick up the rest of my library, gave away the furniture to our lifetime sitter (she’s been with us since Nate was 3 weeks old) she also collected all of Nate’s pets; the chickens, the wild hens, the dogs and the precious cats, we closed the house and returned the keys.
We wanted to take the snowball (cat) with us, but it was almost 400$ to do so, more expensive than for us humans. So Lea took him back along with the other pets to her house. Her family is still caring for them we get pictures and updates all the time.
When we left Haiti, we had 2 small suitcases each and 4 boxes with our most cherished items. That’s it. We got on the bus and got out of Haiti. The trip was another stress filled event. I felt as if I was in some kind of spy or war movie. It was like trying to escape pursuers or the mafia, the bus driver had to keep calling his lookouts to know which streets to turn into, which ones to avoid... we had to change routes several times. A trip that normally took 1 hour to get to the border took almost 8 hours. My heart was in my throat the whole time, but nothing happened expect it lengthened the trip considerably.
We finally got to the border, in the past I have several times made the trip to DR it’s where I spent most of my vacations, but lord had things changed. The hostess on the bus disappeared as soon as the bus stopped, and we had to sort of figure things out on our own. The border has a Haitian side you have to go through customs there, then walk about 2 minutes to the DR side and go again through customs there.
The guards are thieves, there is just no other way to put it. They took out my diabetes meds and Nate’s albuterol… I had to pay to have them put back in our suitcases. Then someone took them back to our bus, had to pay them too, but they put our suitcases on the wrong bus (they all look alike) we then had to pay to get them off, and pay to get them back on the right bus. I spent more money at the border than I had for the tickets! One lady who had brought her TV and paid whatever she had too since Haiti to go with it, lost it at the border for she didn’t have enough money to pay the 200$ on top of the custom fees, the guard just took it out of the bus and took it… just like that.
The trip lasted over 12 hours… by the time we got to Santo Domingo our butts were so sore! We spent a few days in a hotel (very cheap, no breakfast, no restaurant, just a room), before taking another bus to Santiago where we spent 5 days with a friend of mine, before taking our final bus to Puerto Plata to our new apartment and our new life.
Muriel Vieux
#TheAmericanHaitianPoet
November 4th, 2023
#Woke #SocialPoetry
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