A Paradise Lost in a Merciless Separation: A Memoir

By Dr. Marie BA(c)atrice Hyppolite

This book is about an abrupt separation between an eight-year-old and her mother. The story took place in Haiti during the time Duvalier was in power. Haiti had known nearly thirty years of oppression under the dictatorship of the Duvaliers, father and son. Papa Doc created the Tonton Macoute, a gestapo-like police force, to oppress the citizenry and make people do whatever his government wanted. Anyone opposing the regime was a candidate for death. Many people lost their wives, husbands, children, properties, and more to the Tonton Macoute. Unfortunately, that eight-year-old's mother was a casualty of this violence.

After the child witnessed her mother get arrested, she was left with no help, having lived with only her mother her entire life. She did not know who her father was at that time. One neighbor eventually came outside and took the child with her, and from that moment, the child's life was altered.

From her mother's paradise to a whole new system, that child experienced hell. The girl moved from one place to another; even her biological father rejected her. It was quite a journey, but because of the type of child the girl was, she did not allow struggles to bury her alive. She learned how to double her strength and be resilient. She let God enter her life, and with him she embraced life with grace, determination, focus, courage, and fidelity.

No one in this entire world is more resilient than her. She faced all the problems in her life with courage, dignity, and strength. Though life was unfair to her, she never gave up. She let nothing in life break her. Instead, she used misfortune to be strong and fight all the battles that life brought her way.

That girl understood that success was not a gift; one must work hard for it at the cost of pain, discipline, and perseverance. She took all the opportunities she had and turned them into something positive. Despite all the challenges, hatred, misfortune, and triviality she experienced, she managed to become a successful, respectful, and independent woman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885407991

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A Paradise Lost in a Merciless Separation

A Memoir

Dr. Marie Béatrice Hyppolite

Copyright © 2022 by Dr. Marie Béatrice Hyppolite

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

A Paradise Lost in a Merciless Separation

The Expression of Obvious Pain

A Childhood Lost in Adult Adventures

The Power of Prayer

Dr. Hyppolite, a Badly Wrapped Gift from My Father

How Good Decisions Come Out from a Broken Heart

When Disappointment Becomes a Synonym for Blessings

Challenges to Challenges

Beyond Dreams and Memories

The Benefits of Incredulity over Negative Perceptions

The Challenges of Grad School

Job Search

Doctorate Program

My Childhood Friend

Troupe Eclat from St. Jerome Roman Catholic Church

No Errors Could Be Erased

The Community

A Matter of Attitude

Always Be Grateful

Dreams Come True

In memory of the woman with whom I share the same last name, my mother, Madame Lusicka Hyppolite

Foreword

Life is filled with goals and objectives. One is more important than the other. Despite struggles, occasional failures, even our own doubts, we all work hard every day to achieve these goals. Most of the time, the challenge that we face is our motivation in life, but a strong determination is the greatest trait to help us overcome them. If we don’t quit, it is simply a matter of when we will reap the fruits of our hard work. This is the benefit of being persistent, and the author of this book, Dr. Hyppolite, is a well-known example of persistence. She knows that success is the result of hard work, a great attitude, and vital personality traits.

Born in Jérémie-Abricots, Haiti, during the Duvalier dictatorship era, the young Hyppolite has seen it all—oppression, belittlement, sexual abuse. She was only eight years old when she experienced the Tontons Macoute, the gestapo-like police of the Duvaliers’ regime, arrest her beloved mother. She witnessed firsthand how her fearful mother was assaulted and mistreated by the cowards whose only strength was in the guns they carried. Dr. Hyppolite did not let her mother’s trauma and her father’s and siblings’ rejection eclipse her goals. Emigrating to the United States of America in 2003, Dr. Hyppolite knew that she was the first one responsible for her own failure as well as her success. She did not quit; she kept moving forward with a constant velocity to the path of success. She understood that success did not come overnight, and failure was a step toward success. Today, Dr. Hyppolite is a shining light on top of the mountain.

A Paradise Lost in a Merciless Separation is the fruit of persistence. The author says it best at the beginning of the book; this memoir is about a lifelong experience filled with pain, challenges, resilience, determination, focus, love, and beyond. Her statement embraces the core of what persistence is about.

This book is organized into two main parts. The first eight chapters describe the struggles that lead to success. The author presents a vivid expression of pain and the importance of prayers in reaching success. In the remaining chapters, Dr. Hyppolite presents the key characteristics that lead to success.

There are many great books one can read that focus on personal achievement. However, there are some great books that stand out from the pile on your bookshelf. This book is a real recipe of life lessons that lead to true success.

Dr. Hyppolite, you have proven that no mountain can be or remain an obstacle when it comes to fulfilling dreams and bringing them into reality. You have proven that the power of the will surpasses all excuses. You have shown that God wants us to persevere and to remain by his side. You are the concrete example of his love and a model of faith and endurance.

Florenal Joseph, MA, PhD

A Word of Praise

Dr. Marie Béatrice Hyppolite completed her internship for the BSW degree at the Center for Psychotherapy (CFP), Brooklyn, New York, in December of 2010. After completing her MSW in the spring of 2012, she immediately returned to volunteer for one year in CFP’s community engagement, empowerment, and giving-back program. Since then, she has been a diplomate in our counseling and psychotherapy program.

It is evident that Dr. Hyppolite brings her history, values, beliefs, and personal experiences to her empathetic clinical practice. This is evidenced in the way she allows herself to be moved and touched by her clients’ suffering without overt signs of countertransference (the result of unresolved intrapsychic conflicts), the sad soul of the therapist (reverberation with the anguish and pain of clients), or the wounded healer (demonstration of issues resulting from own childhood wounds).

Stories that move us deeply are sacred. They are the vehicles through which we explain and understand our lives. Dr. Hyppolite’s sacred journey portrays a woman of valor. It tells us who she is, where she comes from, and her relationship to the world and the Divine. It is a wonderful story of authenticity, strength, faith, fortitude, resilience, courage, triumph, and healing.

Dr. Hyppolite’s story is a vivid depiction of ideas, beliefs, personal experiences, adversity, and life lessons that evoke powerful emotions and sympathetic insights. Her memoir speaks directly to the universal human soul. All her pain and suffering are contained in the narrative. As such, it is a metaphor for life. Whether you are a victim or a perpetrator of wrongdoing, we will have a story about what happened. Having that story heard, witnessed, and validated, as illustrated in Dr. Hyppolite’s narrative, is a kind of inoculation against reliving trauma, while creating space for radical forgiveness, healing, and transcendence.

John McQueen, LCSW, EdS

Introduction

Haiti is that island in the Caribbean Basin that Christopher Columbus renamed Hispaniola on landing there in December 1492. The western part, called Saint Domingue by the French colonists and renamed Haiti by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti’s hero of independence, has a rich history. It is home to the first successful slave revolt, the first Black nation, and the second independent country in the Western Hemisphere, second only to the United States of America. The limited historical records reveal a successive wave of Arawak immigrants who moved from the Orinoco Delta of South America toward the north, settling in the Caribbean Islands. Around 600 AD, Arawak and Taino Indians arrived in the islands, forcing out the original inhabitants. With the arrival of the Spaniards and other Europeans in the fifteenth century, the Arawak and Taino people were vanquished, almost exterminated. Then began what in French is called La Traite des Noirs, the slave trade of Blacks from Africa to the New World. On defeating the French enslavers, independent Haiti would be ostracized and embargoed. Wracked by racial discord, poverty, and political instability and prone to natural disasters, the country has become the Pariah State it is today.

From its beginning, the country did not have a chance to experience democracy. During the nineteen-year American occupation (1915–34), a semblance of democracy was set up with presidents elected by the legislature. In 1950, Haiti had its first popular election that brought General Paul Magloire to power. Reportedly, the general had participated in a coup against President Dumarsais Estimé, considered the most enterprising Head of State. Under President Estimé, there was freedom of speech, which lasted until François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, assumed power, following the election of September 22, 1957, being sworn into office October 22. Life in Haiti would take a fateful turn. Under Papa Doc, the country experienced the cruelest dictatorship.

On assuming power, Duvalier had his Cagoulards, from French cagoule (hoods) with which they covered their face, to carry out their exactions. Eventually, they became the Tontons Macoute, including the feminine counterparts, the Fillettes Lalo. Both were officially dubbed Volunteers of National Security, the gestapo-like police that caused so much harm during the nearly three decades of the Duvalier dynasty. They terrorized anyone accused of being against Duvalier. An estimated thirty thousand were murdered under Papa Doc’s dictatorship, and tens of thousands fled into exile, precursors of today’s Haitian Diaspora.

That was not expected from the medical doctor. He had gained his moniker Papa Doc for having been a country doctor who played an important role in the fight against yaws, the disfiguring skin disease that was prevalent in Haiti’s countryside. He had been a member of the Griots, the intellectual group that was the forerunner of Noirism, the Black power movement in Haiti that developed to counteract Mulatrisme, whereby the mulattoes had a stranglehold on social, cultural, and economic life. He held degrees in medicine and in anthropology. Moreover, he was an astute mystic, making use of voodoo lore to inspire fear and keep the people in check. With his overwhelming power, he was Haiti’s scariest president ever. People would watch their every move, trusting no one, not even animals like dogs. Apparently, the man was a unique manipulator, pulling his tricks on a whole nation.

But to everything, there is an end, and Papa Doc felt his end coming. In January 1971—I wasn’t born yet—he officially presented to the nation the young leader he had promised: his son, Jean- Claude, who was only nineteen years old, as his successor. Since Jean-Claude was still a minor, twenty-one being the age of adulthood at the time, Papa Doc amended the constitution and changed the age for assuming the presidency from forty to eighteen. Then, Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed Baby Doc, was sworn into office as president for life on April 22, 1971, in keeping with the tradition of the number 22. For François Duvalier claimed 22 as his magical number. Therefore, he was elected on September 22, sworn into office October 22, and died on April 22, as his minions had sworn to uphold. He even claimed to have been responsible for one of his enemies dying on a twenty-second—President John F. Kennedy, on November 22, 1963. To be noted, he died before April 22, according to one of his ardent opponents, Raymond Joseph, in his book For Whom the Dogs Spy (1915). Mr. Joseph even convinced Virginia Prewett, journalist at the defunct Washington Daily News, to publish this fact on April 20, 1971, spoiling the surprise of the April 22 announcement. That’s another story.

Young and inexperienced, Baby Doc could not really govern. Reportedly, his mother, Simone (née Ovide) Duvalier, nicknamed Mama Doc, was like the queen overseeing the immature leader. Thus she got the unofficial title of being the power behind the throne. The regime of father and son lasted twenty-nine years, one year short of three decades, and the Haitian people lived in hell. Among the thousands of victims of the satrapy, including the wrongly incarcerated citizens, was my mother.

Chapter 1

A Paradise Lost in a Merciless Separation

Haiti had known nearly thirty years of oppression under the dictatorship of the Duvaliers, father and son. As previously mentioned, Papa Doc created the Tontons Macoute to oppress the citizenry and make people do whatever his government wanted. Anyone opposing the regime was a candidate for death. Many members among the official terrorists were illiterate, many joining the gang for safety and protection. There’s no counting those who lost their wives, properties, and more to the Tontons Macoute. Unfortunately, my mother was a casualty of this violence.

I was only eight years old when my mother got arrested by a group of armed Tontons. I remember that night vividly, especially for the disruption of the routine she had followed every night after my last meal. She would give me a shower and help me brush my teeth before putting me to bed. That night, she had just helped me take a shower and dressed me in a yellow nightgown. I was ready for bed when those Tontons Macoute came, yelling, Open the door! She inquired about who they were, but they screamed louder, Open the door before we shoot you. Quickly, she shoved me under the bed. Of course, I did not stay there; I was right behind her. Slowly, I opened the door and saw a bunch of Tontons Macoute, armed with long guns. They had no warrant and needed none because she never had been in trouble with the government or the law. I had no idea whatsoever about why she was in that situation.

Brutally, they dragged her into their truck and took off. She kept turning her head back to look at me standing at the corner in my yellow nightgown. I was crying, Please don’t take my mom! Don’t take my mom! Don’t take my mom! No one paid me any attention. My pain was not strong enough to touch their ears or to trouble their criminal minds. They were on a mission and did not have time to focus on a tiny little girl who was crying for love and attention.

My mother was furious. I never saw her like that before, even when she was upset at me. When I looked into my mother’s eyes, I saw fear, anger, and, most of all, shame. She worried about me, and I sensed it. I guess she was wondering who would take care of me because, at the time, I did not know who my father was. She was gone, and I never saw her again. How was this possible? I witnessed my mother being assaulted and mistreated. I cried as much as I could, but I could not do anything to save her from those brutes. Until today, the greatest trauma of my life was watching my mother get arrested and never living with her again.

During the first few hours of turbulence for both me and my mother, the neighbors could not come out. No one was looking. In Haiti, during the Duvaliers’ regime, when the Tontons Macoute were operating, people would hide in their houses, no noise made. The only witness at this crime scene, as I poignantly want to put it, was me. The poor little girl who had no idea about what was going on, the little girl who was not even capable of telling the story later to other people, because she was still in pain over the loss of her mother. The little girl whose only world was her mother, who was now gone.

I do not recall how long I stayed outside. I only remember one neighbor, Mrs. Goodheart, who lived across the street from my mother’s house and came out to my rescue. Before dashing out, she looked left and right and made sure that it was safe to make her move. She quickly grabbed me and took me to her house. She left my mother’s door open. She did not have the audacity to enter the house to get me anything. Only on reaching adulthood did I understand the nature of the danger through which she had put herself and her family.

Mrs. Goodheart lived with her husband and four children, two boys and two girls, in a one-bedroom apartment. Her place was very small, and it was the first time I had ever been in her house or any neighbor’s house. When I got to her place, the kids were already in bed. She had placed mattresses and blankets on the floor for the kids to sleep, and apparently, I was going to sleep with the kids on the floor. It was a big shock for me because I had never slept in such a condition. As a mother of four, I assumed her mother’s instinct had called on her to protect me, but things were not easy. Mr. Goodheart, her husband, screamed his lungs off at her to leave me outside. As much as she wanted to follow her husband’s instructions, her mother’s heart would not allow her to comply. She said to him, Just let her stay for the night, and I will take her to her father tomorrow. This is how Haitian people used to be supportive. As for the consequences, they would think about it later.

Going back deeper in my memory, Mr. Goodheart was not a bad person; he was just scared. Scared of having anything happen to his family while his wife was trying to protect a poor little girl. He was scared because he had no idea what my mother had done to be treated so horribly. He feared losing his own family. Overall, he was very fearful of the Tontons Macoute. I stayed with the Goodheart family for the night. Terrified as they were, I don’t believe the couple slept that night.

Early the next morning, Mr. Goodheart asked his wife when she was going to drop me off at my father’s. She started crying. I guess she felt trapped and did not know what to do. Or was she thinking