Things are looking up in Haiti. The country’s political system is stable enough to allow for Bill Clinton to become a U.N. Ambassador there and to promote foreign investment, which Tonic recently covered, and efforts to protect women against gender-based violence, which Tonic also covered, have taken shape.
Jean-Robert Cadet was a child slave in Haiti, and now he is working to raise awareness of the modern form of slavery practiced there. Cadet spoke to a group of students at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, as part of his tour across the developed world, telling his story.
“Cadet was a restavek,” Silva writes. “Restavek is a Creole term that translates as ‘one who stays with.’ Children that are restaveks ‘stay with’ their hosts, working as domestic servants.”
According to Silva, “when Cadet was 4 years old, he was given away as a slave. He was made to sleep under the kitchen table and get up at 5 a.m. to fetch water and begin other household chores.”
Cadet, who is the author of “Restavek: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American,” told Silva that “the hardest part was not being beaten but being in isolation. Restavek children had to stay out of sight but within earshot of their host.”
Cadet came to the U.S. at age 15 as a restavek with the family that owned him, but was cut loose to survive on the streets of New York when the family realized having a slave could get them into trouble, according to the Web site for his nonprofit group, Jean Cadet Restavek Foundation. He eventually entered the U.S. Army and is now a school teacher in Ohio.
Cadet hopes his foundation and international attention may prod the Haitian government to do something about slavery.
“There is hope,” Cadet said.
Photo courtesy of LucasTheExperience’s, via Flickr
