The Power of the Baton: An Inspirational Tale of a Family United

By Daniel Labossiere

During the Duvalier (Papa Doc) era, many Haitian families were desperate to escape the reign of their ruthless dictator. An eight-year-old boy migrates to Brooklyn, New York, to reunite with his family. His status as a Haitian immigrant leads to bullying and ridicule while social and economic conditions threaten the familys survival. Through the power of prayer, and an unprecedented bond that turns uncles, aunts, cousins, and siblings into a family of one, they overcome impossible odds. He documents his inspirational life journey to teach the new generation about the power of prayer and the value of family unity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524547356

Daniel Labossiere

Daniel Labossiere was born the fourteenth of fifteen children on July 12, 1967, in Les Cayes, Haiti. It was the height of the Duvalier (Papa Doc) era, and the citizens of Haiti were eager to escape the political persecution of the Duvalier regime. Daniel migrated to Brooklyn, New York, in June 1975, where he was reunited with his parents who had begun moving the family out of Haiti a few years earlier. Bullied and ridiculed by schoolmates for being a non-English speaking Haitian immigrant, he turned to reading and writing as an escape and as a tool for perfecting English as a second language. In 1981, Daniel and his family moved to Miami, Florida, where he attended American High School. His creative writing skills would prove to be a tremendous asset as it led to multiple scholastic awards to help fund his college education after graduating high school in 1985. Though encouraged by educators to pursue a career in writing, he elected to follow a business path in order to achieve his dream of entrepreneurship. In 1989, he graduated from the University of South Florida’s school of business with a degree in accounting. Within four years of his graduation, his dream of entrepreneurship was realized when he started his own IT business, specializing in health-care automation. At the time of this writing, Daniel Labossiere still lives in South Florida. He has been happily married for twenty-three years and has two sons, aged nineteen and seventeen. He still owns and operates his IT business and continues to write creative works mostly for personal enjoyment.

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Prologue

The mid-1960s marked a period of political fear on the island of Haiti. President François Duvalier (Papa Doc), who was elected in 1957, had just declared himself as president for life. With his army of military police, which was known as the Tonton Macoute, at his command, he ruled with an iron fist. Desperate to display their power and authority, the Tonton Macoutes seized any opportunity to make examples out of anyone who dared to speak against the regime. Those who did not support the government and had no alternatives for leaving the island were forced to live life in constant fear. But those who had a way out were doing everything they could to leave, migrating to foreign countries like France, Canada, and the United States.

During this same period, the Republic of the Congo was offering tremendous opportunities to Haitians seeking to start a new life elsewhere. After years of oppression and slave labor, the Republic of the Congo was finally granted independence in 1960. As part of its rebuilding efforts, the republic was massively recruiting educators and skilled professionals to provide training to its people. With French being the primary language of those educated in Haiti and with little opportunities available there even for the well-educated, Haiti became a great recruiting ground for the French-speaking Republic of the Congo. The republic was offering land and a high salary to any who was willing to make the relocation. The possibility for a better life seemed much more attainable in the Congo than in Haiti.

The United States, at the time, had a very high demand for skilled blue-collar laborers and administered an open-door policy for foreigners seeking entry into its borders. They were welcomed as long as these individuals could prove that they had training or experience in a specific trade or profession that was in demand. The most highly regarded trade school in Haiti was named Jide Damien (pronounced Jeeday Damiye), located in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Graduates of this school had the fewest challenges with obtaining a US visa based on their completion of a certified training program. My dad, Luckner Labossiere, was a graduate of Jide Damien. Though not currently working in his trade, he had successfully completed the training program that would certify him as a welder. He had been approached on many occasions by his niece Claudette—who worked for an agency that helped skilled laborers, like my dad, to enter the United States—about getting a US visa and starting a new life abroad, but this was not the future he envisioned for himself and his family. He had no desire to leave his homeland, but that would change; the day would soon come when my parents’ sole mission in life would be to move their children out of Haiti so they could escape the dangerous political climate and could be provided with opportunities for a better education and a brighter future than the one that awaited them on the island. This would become a sentiment shared by all my aunts and uncles—my mom’s brothers and sisters—who wanted the same for their children and were willing to work together to help realize that dream.

This is a true story of how one family’s love led to their unity and how they developed strength through this unity and how they moved mountains with this strength to accomplish a single mission that has forever changed the destiny of future generations. The accounts shared in these pages are mostly based on my personal experiences as a member of this family. There have been some clarifications of the facts from my elders for the periods when I was too young to remember specific events and details with much clarity. But for the most part, these are my views and my experiences. So before I begin the story, it is only fitting to provide a short insight on who I am and to introduce the two people who have influenced my life the most: my parents.

Part 1

First Generation Sets the Path

Chapter 1

Leading by Example

Ma Laboss

Being born in an impoverished country has many disadvantages. The most unfortunate of these is the lack of proper medical care. Without it, the most basic of illnesses can prove fatal; thus, the tragedy of death becomes commonplace. Four of my siblings passed away before I was even born. Few people could ever find the strength to move forward after the loss of a child. The fact that my parents were able to overcome the tragedy of losing so many children is a notion that remains inconceivable to me even as I sit here writing these words. I was born the fourteenth of fifteen children. My birth name was Glodyn, and my nickname was Dyn (pronounced Dan). I would later legally change my name to Daniel. This name was more fitting with my new American lifestyle and allowed me to maintain the nickname given to me by my Haitian heritage. My family was poor, but by Haiti’s standards, we were among the more privileged. We had a roof over our heads, we always had meals on our table, and we had enough in excess to share with the less fortunate. In our town, these were the standards by which affluence was measured. But the reality of it was that our greatest asset was each other.

My mom was a remarkably beautiful woman. At five feet four, she was not exceptionally tall, but she was perfectly proportioned for her height. She had long, wavy hair and a caramel complexion. Her eyes were a noticeable light brown; they were gentle to gaze into but fierce when angered. She was a mother figure to anyone who needed one. She always prepared enough food to feed her children as well as other neighborhood children who were less fortunate. Other parents would entrust their children in her care sometimes for days at a time. Even as a teenager, she was more of a mother figure to her younger siblings than her own mother, my grandmother. So at a very early age, she adopted the nickname Manman, meaning mother. I never heard anyone call my mom by her first name, Anita. Everyone knew her as Ma Laboss. Ma was a shortened version of Manman, and Laboss was a shortened version of our last name, Labossiere.

My parents were very kind and generous. They opened their home and provided food and shelter to two teenage boys who lost their families and their homes after a devastating hurricane nearly destroyed the neighboring town of Jeremy in 1954. The boys remained in their care until adulthood. At the time, my parents already had five children of their own. Ma Laboss operated a home-based business that made assorted candies and sold them to local merchants. One of her employees was a single dad who was raising his daughter, Simone, on his own. However, since he barely had the means to care for himself, my parents took over the care of the infant from the age of two and raised her as their own. They already had seven children at the time. Simone would grow up to be a tremendous blessing to our family, acting as both an older sister and a mother figure in my parents’ absence. I could give countless accounts of acts of kindness and unselfishness for which my parents were well known and admired. Ma Laboss was a person who genuinely cared for her fellow man. She truly believed that God placed people in her path for her to be of assistance to them.

As kindhearted as Ma Laboss was and as much as she loved children, she was not one to hold back when it came to disciplining her children. She had no remorse about resorting to whipping as a form of discipline. In the United States, parents will sometimes spank their children and will at times get in trouble for doing so. In Haiti, we didn’t get spanked; we got beaten. A Haitian child could sleep through what a US parent would call a spanking. I’m not advocating beating or spanking as a proper form of discipline. I’m merely explaining that it has always been a practice embedded in our culture. Our parents weren’t the only ones allowed to discipline us with beatings. Teachers were permitted (or rather, expected) to hit students for not doing their homework or being disrespectful. If we did something that required a beating and our parents were sick or for some reason incapable of administering the beating, it was not uncommon for them to ask an aunt, uncle, or other adult to do the job for them.

Although Haiti is widely known for its practice of voodoo, the majority of Haitians are Godly people with very strong Christian beliefs. The worst type of beating was given for breaking any of God’s Ten Commandments. If they disrespected their parents, used God’s name in vain, or were caught stealing, God may deal with them in the afterlife, but they’d still have hell to pay when their parents got a hold of them here. I, on the other hand, was exempt from any form of harsh disciplinary action. I was lucky enough to be born with a condition that could literally cause me to die from crying. Once I began weeping and exhaled out a cry, I didn’t know how to regain my composure to once again inhale normally. This would result in a lack of oxygen to my brain, and before long, I would pass out. At times, my eyes would roll to the back of my head, and I would even have seizure-like spasms. One of the worst beatings any of my siblings could get would be for doing anything that would result in me passing out from crying. It became the eleventh commandment in our household. Thou shall not make Glodyn cry! Getting anything and everything I could possibly want just by crying or pretending to cry—that’s every child’s fantasy! It didn’t take me very long to recognize the power this gave me over my older siblings, and I was not reluctant to exploit that power to its fullest potential. If anyone had something I wanted, it was pretty much mine. It would frustrate my older siblings to the point of tears when they wanted to discipline me but couldn’t lay a finger on me. I was protected by the queen of discipline herself, Ma Laboss, and no one dared to disobey Her Highness.

Not all my siblings were older than me. I have a younger brother. His name is Berthollet, but we affectionately shortened it to Tollet (pronounced Toe-le). Unlike my older siblings, Tollet saw me as having superpowers. If my older sister was baking a cake and he wanted to have a teaspoon of frosting, she would say No! I would then come right behind him and ask for the same thing. My eyes would already be wet; my lips, already curling. I was ready to cry before she even had a chance to deny my request. She would simply hand me a spoon filled with frosting, and I would then go off and share it with Tollet. After a while, he stopped asking for things that he knew he wouldn’t get; he would just send me, and I would never be denied. Not only was I his brother, but I was also his Superman.

The two things that Ma Laboss was known for, even more than her acts of kindness, were her faith in God and the artistry and creativity in her tools of discipline. Prayer was her answer to everything—good and bad. She prayed to give God thanks for the good, and she prayed for Him to fix the bad. She sang praises of worship while she was cooking, washing clothes, and doing dishes. When we were sick, she prayed for us to get well; when we were well, she prayed to keep us from getting sick. She started every prayer with a prayer, asking for the wisdom to know what to pray for. In the rare occasions when her prayers were not answered, she had faith that it was because God had a higher purpose.

Ma Laboss loved her children unconditionally, but we were a handful, to say the least. The girls did not require as much disciplining, but raising seven boys required constant reminders of who was in charge. My brothers thought that hiding all the belts in the house would be a good solution for minimizing the beatings, but all it did was inspire the inner creativity inside that woman. She turned the designing of tools of discipline into an art. And believe me, she was a Picasso. She carefully selected three flexible branches of a tree from our yard; peeled off the long, slender leaves; cut the remaining stems to equal lengths; and meticulously braided them together. She then used the leaves to design a wristband at the top end of the braid so that she wouldn’t lose her grip when she administered beatings. This whipping tool was called a reegwaz. Another tool of choice was a short stick with several long pieces of leather attached to one end. This one was known as the matinet. She wouldn’t hit her children with the stick. The stick was just the handle. She wasn’t trying to break any bones. Her goal was to create a powerful sting. But the leather stung so bad they’d often beg for the stick. These tools were used for planned beatings. For the spur-of-the-moment discipline, when there was no time to fetch her whipping tools, whatever was available would do just fine. If she needed to act fast to put a stop to bad behavior right away, she could take a break from grooming herself to give a few quick swats with her comb and get right back to combing her hair without missing a beat. If we were in a setting where the administration of a beating was inappropriate, like a church, there was the infamous Ma Laboss pinch. The pinch was subtle and discreet; it didn’t draw attention from other people who might be nearby, but it was effective. It wasn’t long and drawn out like a beating; it was quick, a second or two at most, but it could stop the circulation of blood in a two-square-inch area of an arm. We knew the purpose of the pinch was to discipline while avoiding attention, so we didn’t dare scream. We knew if we simply adjusted the behavior for which we were being disciplined, that would be the end of it, but if we screamed and drew attention to ourselves and the fact that we were being pinched, a beating would follow later.

Ma Laboss knew that to keep us from driving her to an early grave, she had to be strong and practice some very tough love. A good example of this is an incident that occurred with my older brother Berthony (a.k.a. Tony). Tony is older than me by four years. My parents had a child every two years, so whenever there’s a gap of more than two years between two siblings, that is an indication that one had passed away. I had an older brother named Claudel who was born after Tony, but he died as an infant. This is the reason for the difference of four years between Tony and me. Tony may not have been the most troublesome of all the boys, but he did create his share of havoc. Perhaps an example would serve better in painting a picture of the challenge that Ma Laboss faced in raising her boys and the courage she needed to step up to that challenge. Here is just one of the numerous incidents when Ma Laboss’s orders would flow into one of Tony’s ears and come right out the other:

As could be expected from living on an island, in addition to our regular meals, much of what we ate was naturally produced. We ate mangoes, coconuts, and tomatoes picked right from a tree or plant. But one thing we really loved to snack on was almonds. If you’ve only ever eaten almonds purchased on a supermarket shelf, you probably already know that they are not very filling. You’d have to eat quite a few almonds to feel like you’ve eaten any. That’s because you are only being sold the almond seed. What you probably don’t know is that there is a lot more to eat on an almond than just the seed, and they are a lot more fun to eat right off the almond tree. First, we eat the skin, which covers the hard shell. That’s the best part of the almond. It tastes almost like a peach. Once we reach the shell, we have to crack it open to get to the nut, or the seed. Although almond trees are not rare in Haiti, they are not as numerous as mangoes or coconuts. So they are a bit hard to resist when we see one. Well, it so happened that one of the homes in our neighborhood had an almond tree, and Tony, who was about nine at the time, had his mind set on spending his entire summer eating almonds until the tree was bare naked of them. The problem was that the neighbor’s yard was enclosed with a six-foot wall that had to be climbed and walked across before one could get to the almond tree. To make matters worse, there was a German shepherd on the other side of the wall that was guarding the yard from trespassers. The dog made no distinction between children and adults. If a child made its way to his side of the wall, well, that was just God sending him a treat.

One day, Ma Laboss happened to see Tony sitting on the wall and enjoying his fill of almonds; he was enjoying so much that he was totally oblivious to the barking dog on the other side of the wall. She called for him to come to her. She watched as he struggled to balance himself while walking all the way across to the other end of the wall, where it was a bit easier to climb down. The dog could be heard barking furiously along the other side of the wall as Tony scuttled across. When Tony was finally standing before her, she looked down at him and very nicely said to Tony, Listen to me. I don’t want you eating any more almonds off that almond tree. You hear me? But the neighbors don’t mind, he answered back. It’s not the neighbors I’m concerned about. I don’t want you falling off that wall and hurting yourself. You might even fall on the other side of that wall and have that dog eat you alive. Don’t let me find out you were on that wall again. Ma Laboss was not one to repeat her warnings. Believing the matter to be closed, she turned around and walked away. Two weeks had passed, and nothing else was heard of the matter. One day, while Ma Laboss was busy doing chores inside the house, she heard a lot of commotion outside. She rushed out to find a neighbor approaching the house. He was accompanied by a group of neighborhood children and was carrying Tony in his arms. Tony was screaming in agony and was holding his crotch with his hands. Before the crowd even reached the house, Ma Laboss raised her arms to the heavens, and with a voice trembling with concern, she began to shout out her prayers. In the name of your son, Jesus, Lord, please let my child be okay. Whatever his injuries are, may they not be serious or permanent. As the man laid Tony at my mother’s feet on the front porch, he explained that Tony had been running across a wall when he lost his footing and fell on the wall with his legs wide open like a wishbone. Ma Laboss’s tone quickly changed. She looked down at Tony and calmly asked, The same wall that I told you not to climb? Still gripping his crotch and with his eyes tightly shut and while grinding his teeth in anguish, Tony denied this implication with a shake of his head. But the helpful neighbor, anxious to provide Ma Laboss with all the details, continued with his report. He was going up there to get some almonds off that tree. He’s lucky he didn’t fall on the other side. That dog would have torn him apart. Ma Laboss knelt down and asked Tony to remove his hands from his crotch. She lowered his shorts to diagnose the extent of his injury. After analyzing the noticeable gash on his inner thigh, near his scrotum, she stood up and walked inside the house. When she reappeared through the front door a few seconds later, she was carrying her sewing kit, a clean towel, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. She began chanting her prayers as she proceeded to sterilize a needle and thread with the alcohol. God, I ask you to take control of these hands and fill my mind with the knowledge I will need to take care of this child’s injuries. I pray that you place your healing hand over him and protect him from any possible infections. She then recruited volunteers from the crowd to hold down Tony’s arms and legs to keep him from moving and groping. Tony screamed in agony as Ma Laboss sterilized his wound with the cloth dampened with alcohol. She then proceeded to stitch his thigh with the needle and thread right on our front porch and in the presence of a stunned group of onlookers. Later that evening, after Tony had settled down from his embarrassing experience, Ma Laboss took advantage of the opportunity to forewarn him, After your wounds have healed, I will deal with your disobedience.

I’ve often shared this story with my friends who grew up here in the States and who don’t quite get the picture of what life is like for most families in an impoverished country. There’s always one person who will ask Why didn’t she call an ambulance? I know that some of you reading this will probably wonder the same. The harsh reality is that life on our side of the world did not include certain luxuries that we tend to take for granted in the free world. There was a hospital in our town that was established by foreign missionaries,