Hope Beyond the Horizons: A Dream Solidified

By Paul Mathias Ed.S.

During the ruthless times of the infernal regime of Francois (Papa Doc) and Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier in Haiti lived a man whose hope could be found nowhere but beyond the distant skylines. His confidence birthed a dream that forced him to keep his children on a low profile. They could barely write their names to avoid being detected by the Tonton Makouts who liked no one who progressed. His oldest son escaped through hectic situations, unfortunate circumstances, and irresistible temptations that attacked his faithfulness toward his family honor and his fiance to whom he made a promise before he left the country. Hope was discovered beyond the horizons and life was changed...

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512784282

Paul Mathias Ed.S.

The author is a first generation immigrant American who went through the system from the bottom up. He maneuvered to master the language, earned a bachelors degree in French, a masters in counselor education, and a specialist degree in educational leadership. He either lived it or have a relationship with someone who did. He is a compassionate person with a counselors mind, a poets spirit and a writers heart. He lives to change humanity one person at a time.

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Copyright © 2017 Paul Mathias, Ed.S.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-8427-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8429-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8428-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906441

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/17/2017

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Part I Roots of certain decorum Historical Background

Part II A family in agony among many

Part III The wind of an opportunity Telescoping the dream

Part IV The labyrinth of the decision

Part V The dilemma to advance the dream

Part VI The risk of the voyage

Part VII A dream solidified

Part VIII Face to face with temptation

Part IX Steadfastness Despite Attraction

Part X Preparing the triumphant return

Part XI The Day of the Return

Part XII Exploring the Environment

Part XIII On the wedding day

Part XIV The days of the Honeymoon

Part XV Meeting of Destiny

Part XVI Sylvio returns to Miami

Part XVII Back to normal

Epilogue

Works Consulted

DEDICATION

This novel is dedicated to my beloved wife, Martha, whom I love crazily, my marvelous children:

Paul II,

Paulemile,

Thamar

Tharyana

For whom I live

I am also dedicating it to my wonderful mother, Altagrace D. Mathias, my late dad Saint-Jean Mathias, and my exceptional siblings:

Smy

Sultane

The late Berthony

Soeurette

Josette

Alta

Fosia

whom I love much.

PROLOGUE

In 1957, Haiti had just celebrated its one-hundred-fifty-third anniversary as an independent nation, when an infernal regime emerged in its bosom that destroyed the normality of existence and prevented optimism from shining on its territory. The murderous and cruel regime’s defenders in uniform ravaged families across the country. The claws of fear and the horns of death penetrated bones and souls to create a climax of desperateness and helplessness. People who tried to look for a healthier life disappeared at dusk and their lifeless bodies found at dawn amid the bushes in desolate places. Most times, those people vanished without a trace with not any idea of investigation. The murderers used others as fertilizer either in the wetland behind the walls of the deadliest prison in the Caribbean, Fort Dimanche. The elders were leaving and could not foresee the sun of spring sparkling on their offspring. The future looked somber everywhere. There was a small group amid the people who never let the thick dark cloud of hopelessness block the ray of possibilities in its sky. In their minds, they confidently dreamed of a better tomorrow, attainable no matter the price. Hope Beyond the Horizons: A Dream Solidified opens a window of opportunity for anyone to share this astonishing, exhilarating and informational story. It exposes the misery of individuals, the steadfastness of a family, the conviction, the courage and the faithfulness of a young man throughout his life’s journey and his accomplishment. Discover for yourself what happened.

PART I

Roots of certain decorum Historical Background

Twenty-two kilometers, or 13.7 miles, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the outer southwestern part of the West Department, lays a small seaside town called Léogâne. Its latitude is 18°30’38’’ N, and its longitude is 72°38’02’’ W. 13 meters, or 42 feet, above sea level.

Léogâne’s name was Yaguana by the aboriginal inhabitants of the island called Tainos before the infiltration of the Spaniards led by Christopher Columbus in 1492. It was the capital of Xaragua, the largest of the five caciquats, or kingdoms, that occupied the island. Bohecchio governed Xaragua with his sister Anacaona, whose name means Golden Flower. Anacaona was the first poetess, singer, and dancer in the kingdom. She was the wife of Caonabo, who was the King of the Maguana Caciquat, or Kingdom, now Dominican territory.

After the Santa Maria had gone under water in the Northern coast of Haiti, Christopher Columbus salvaged enough wood from the sunken ship to build a fort called the Nativity where he left many Spanish sailors who could not return with him on the other two boats. The Tainos—called Indians by the invaders, because they thought they arrived in India when they saw the territory—were the aborigines of the land. Columbus named the island Hispaniola, which means little Spain due to its natural attraction.

After the departure of Columbus, the Spanish sailors had raped the Taino women, stole their gold, and strangled the men. The aggressors were dead by the time Columbus had returned. He suspected that Caonabo, the king of Maguana, had directed his subalterns to perpetrate the crime against the sailors. Columbus pretended that he wanted to make peace with Caonabo by plotting with Ojeda, one of the Spaniards, to entice him into a deadly trap.

Ojeda offered a gift to Caonabo made of polished iron chains and handcuffs. Caonabo thought his gifts were ornaments. He agreed to wear them. None of the surrounding kingdoms were barbarous; thinking of such trick was an impossibility. They were a peaceful people. Caonabo allowed Ojeda the opportunity to capture him and take him away to his destruction. Columbus ordered to transport him to Spain as a criminal. He died in a shipwreck on high seas.

After they had assassinated her brother Bohecchio and her husband Caonabo, Anacaona succeeded her husband in Xaragua. The Spaniard aliens felt intimidated by the popularity of the Queen. Columbus’ successor, Nicolas Ovando, despite the friendly welcome of Anacaona, ordered the massacre of her people. He burned their village, captured the Queen as a prisoner, and later hung her.

At the time of Columbus’ arrival, the Taino population was unknown but estimated to be two and a half million, which was reduced to approximately five hundred in less than fifty years. They succumbed to the European diseases and died because of the slavery under which they forced them to live.

Columbus’ son, Diego, started the importation of African slaves to the island as early as 1505. The slaves drew attention because of their robustness and endurance. A new people gleaned from different parts of Africa repopulated the whole country. It became the richest colony ever and earned the title La Perle des Antilles - The Pearl of the Antilles, by the French who later took over the Spaniards.

The African slaves decided not to continue living in such abject conditions. There were several sporadic unsuccessful slave revolts throughout Haiti. After the French revolution, at the end of the eighteenth century, slaves and mulattos all over the country had organized themselves and attacked the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. After many battles, they defeated Bonaparte’s mighty army and repealed slavery out of the country. The French were beaten and had to vacate the premises, and Haiti claimed its independence on January 1, 1804, as the first and only successful slave revolt in the world.

Haiti became the first African descent nation in the world to free itself. The mulattos fought alongside Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the general who led the winning battle. The was one of the most noticeable. He became the president of the republic of Haiti in the West and the South, after a split with Henri Christophe, who became king of Northern Haiti after Dessalines’ murder in Port-au-Prince on October 17, 1806, in a plot set by political rivals. After that, when Simon Bolivar, in South America, was struggling in the fight for independence, he and his troops took refuge in Haiti. Pétion assisted Bolivar, who became the conquistador of most of SouthAmerica like Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, to set those countries free from Spain. Pétion gave them money, weapons, and volunteer soldiers to help them fight for their freedom and for millions of others. He helped them unveiled the ugliness, the cruelty and the unspeakable reality of evil slavery and the spinelessness of its conductors.

While the French revolution was going on at the end of the eighteenth century, slaves all throughout Haiti had organized themselves and attacked the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. After many fierce battles, the French were beaten and had to vacate the premises, and Haiti claimed its independence on January 1, 1804, as the first and only successful slave revolt in the world. Everyone takes pride to be born in a land filled with so many stories, but most people in Léogâne felt indebted to their ancestors. The former slaves who inherited the place where the great Queen Anacaona once lived, want the best for themselves. They all aspired to have daughters like the Queen. Each family wished for their children to succeed. They looked at each child as the future of his/her family. As goes the saying Pitit se richès malere - Children are the wealth of the poor - so go the families. More children meant more chances for a change in the household. It was customary that a family had a dozen offspring. Patience was the key to anyone’s success. The inhabitants of the region believed with patience one could find the nipples of an ant, even its belly button, with extra care. Many of those families hid their hope in the distant and unreachable horizons.

PART II

A family in agony among many

In the late 1970’s, there was one family near the city of Léogâne, in a town called Bounda-Chita, whose fortune was not at all plenty; parents could not afford to send their children to school. First, schooling represented another financial hardship, and second, the parents feared that the officials would target and kill the literate youngsters who, once educated, would demand change. Their town was remote from the city. The city people saw themselves as better than those coming from the countryside. They took pleasure calling them moun mòn - mountain people. The family’s visits to the city were basically limited to needs not pleasure.

The town existed in the middle of the mountains. The roads were very dusty, and when it rained, the hills got muddy and slippery. The two corridors that led to it were dirt roads not big enough for two donkeys to walk in opposite directions without crashing into each other. On either side of the road were fences made of kandelab—lacteal or candelabra plants; doliv—moringa; medsiyen benni—Jatropha Curcas, which would grow into trees. Between each tree, the inhabitants placed branches of thorny acacia. Behind those natural fences were cornfields, sugar cane, cassava plantations, and banana plants. Depending on the season of the year, one might find different harvests.

Its population was peaceful and respectful. Their local economy was agricultural. As a rural area, it was green. Near that town, the people were fortunate enough to enjoy a hospital, since the former first lady, the wife of the late dictator François Papa Doc Duvalier—who held the country hostage for fourteen years (Lawless, MacLeod, Girault, Ferguson, 2017) before his death—was from the area. Simone Ovide Duvalier was the mother of the then dictator, Jean-Claude Baby Doc Duvalier, who was only 19 years old when his father made him president for life. Simone had seen daylight in the city. That was the best thing that could have happened to the town although it was not easy for the peasants to see a doctor when there was a need.

For the government to keep its hegemony, its supporters had to design a system for everyone to be under control to avoid any plot that might have overthrown the regime. To that effect, there were different people in uniform defending the regime, four of which were the most common. The first kind was the army people who wore the traditional khaki. That branch of the armed forces of Haiti trained the recruits to be soldiers. They did not need a high school diploma to register or join that group. They earned their promotions by what they did, or what they had to show. Those with less education could spend their entire lives without ever receiving an honor for promotion. They existed everywhere in the capital and every city or town in the country.

There would be a captain in charge of the local station. The captain, or commandant, never remained in one position too long, to avoid aligning himself with any home group that would help any revolt against the administration. They changed them, and so it was for the soldiers. Because of the repetitive movements, it was difficult for those men to keep a healthy family, or have a wife with them. Everywhere they stationed, they left two or three kids behind, and with different women. Those kids grew up with false ideas that they inherited power from their fathers, who were soldiers and whom they did not know, in most cases. The town of Bounda-Chita had a many of those children.

There was a second class of men in uniform. They wore the golden khaki. The primary condition to join was a high school diploma and a healthy physical body. They trained them for four years in the prestigious Army school called Académie Militaire d’Haïti—Military Academy of Haiti. Upon graduation, they became officers of the army. They earned promotions much faster than the traditional military members. The graduates were professionals who served at different levels of society while remaining a soldier. Society portrayed them as a privileged group amid the armed forces. They would send some of them to supervise different stations in different places throughout the country, but they would not stay for long lest ‘twas punishment for something they might have done.

The third group of people in uniform was a special task force group called Le Corps des Léopards—The Body of the Leopards. That team carried the camouflage U.S. Army uniform that made them resemble the animal whose name they took. It wasn’t necessary for the members to be high school graduates although they promoted that they had to have a diploma. But they had to have a certain academic level for the rigorous training they received. People knew them to be the meanest in term of defending the safety and power of the president. They had their leader but were still under the leadership of the General of the armed forces. Jacques Gracia was the Général de Brigade—General of Brigade.

The fourth kind was a group of gunmen and women, created by Francois Papa Doc Duvalier; it was the most dangerous among the four groups. They were a different breed. Their uniform was blue jeans shirt and pants, with a cap of the same color. Often, they had a red handkerchief on their shoulders or around their necks. They carried a brand-new machete with a case hanging on their side. Many times, the weapon would be in their hands, and for those in the cities, they may have had an old rifle that shot one bullet at a time. The people called the males Tonton Makout and the women Fillette Lalo or Fiyèt Lalo.

This group received the least training, if at all, for any confrontation if any group of rebels was to revolt against the regime. They were the class to make sure one would walk a straight line. They expected one to walk, talk, breathe, and even think a certain way. If one dared think or did any of the above, he/she risked exposing his/her life and that of his/her family, friends included. Most of the adherents were illiterate and had no social skills. They chose them amid the peasants and empowered for equalizing the army’s power and the people’s minds. Their official name was: Milice des Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale—Militia of National Security Volunteers (MVSN). In 1958, Doctor Francois Duvalier created the militia, and 1959 he declared it to be a paramilitary group.

It was very sinister in many cities and towns throughout the country, depending on who was the local chief. The VSN Bureau was an isolated small building painted pale blue. In front of the building, one could see a lonely flagpole. The flag itself floated as the people were moving with not much hope. The gallery was so somber; it was considered by many like an introduction to a death sentence. On either side of the main entrance were one or two tiny rooms. The interrogation room or torture chamber was toward the back. As a detainee walked towards that destination, he/she would gasp for air because each step represented a giant step toward the end of life. In the back sat the cells where they threw the lifeless bodies to await the final moments at night before an open-back jeep or a pickup truck pulled up to transport the corpses for disposal.

The militia was everywhere in the country. Its members were bloodthirsty. Their presence intimidated innocent families. They acted like hyenas to find whoever they may devour. Without detecting someone red-handed in an action the government opposed, they couldn’t receive the promotion to higher positions or receive more recognition. That only meant when the time arrived for them to get that promotion, they’d even give up their family members such as a brother, a sister, a mother or a father, along with distant cousins, friends or neighbors. There was one family in Bounda-Chita who refused to let its dream die without even throwing a fist to defend its honor and the future of its children. It was certain they couldn’t trust