Features
(PHOTOS BY RICK DELVECCHIO/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)
Best friends Antoinette Valbrun, 16, right, and Guerline Bobrun, 20, attend school in their hometown of Ounaminthe, Haiti, and sell merchandise in the bi-national market in Dajabón, Dominican Republic, to earn extra money for their families.
Crossing against danger, a teen earns her dignity
December 9th, 2009
By Rick DelVecchio
DAJABÓN, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC – Antoinette Valbrun has been crossing the river since she was 8 and has the scars to show for it.
The 16-year-old Haitian from the border town of Ounaminthe attends school and, like many teenagers, has a part-time job, too. But in her case, she has to go to work before she goes to school. And the trip to work, crossing a tense international border, can be a rough one.
Antoinette works here in this northern frontier market town. She would work closer to home, but there aren't any jobs for her on the Haiti side. So, she has been crossing the Massacre River on Mondays and Fridays at 4 a.m. to sell toiletries out of a shoulder bag to earn a little extra money for herself and her family. As a Haitian citizen she is free to cross on market days, Mondays and Fridays, during the hours when the gates are open for a bi-national bazaar.
Antoinette doesn't have papers to cross the border on any other day, nor at any time on market days before the gates open at 8 on the Dominican side. Yet she feels that literally wading into trouble on a regular basis is her only chance to get ahead.
If she delayed until 8, she wouldn't have enough time in the market before she had to cross back to go to school in the afternoon. What's more, she would lose customers who show up at 7, and she is too ambitious a young woman to let all that business get away.
Such are the workaday tradeoffs of Haitians trying to make a life on the Dominican frontier. On their side of the river is home but no opportunity, as an organized economy does not exist and civil institutions offer little for the poor. On the other side is a lively retail trade and a chance to earn meager but regular cash for life's necessities, but also the constant risk of anti-Haitian backlash.
For Antoinette, getting hurt while crossing is only the first danger she faces when going to work, and not the worst.
In an interview in October, she showed scars on her forearm from what looked like scrapes. She said she was injured one morning when border guards pushed her in the river as she approached the fence on the Dominican side. But she quickly described a harsher encounter: A woman in the market crashed a rock against her head, sending her to the hospital.
People attack her to get her merchandise, she said. Or they attack her because of who she is: a Haitian abroad.
“This is nothing,”' Antoinette said. “Every day. It's normal.”
Haitians in general are vulnerable in a frontier environment charged with national and racial tensions, but women are particularly at risk. And teenage girls are perhaps the most threatened of all, because of the constant threat of sexual victimization.
Girls in the Dajabon market face the threat of sexual violence “every day,” said Sister Nidia Victoria Zuluaga of the St. John the Evangelist, or Juanistas, community in Ouanaminthe.
Although she has been bruised on the outside, Antoinette has made it to age 16 without deeper wounds. She seems emotionally well-adjusted, if not thriving, as she displays a teenager's healthy pride and love of friendship.
Her best friend is Guerline Bobrun, a woman of 20 who also works in the market. At the end of an interview with a reporter, the friends were in great humor as they slapped high-fives and congratulated themselves on having preserved their health, integrity and independence.
The young women owe their freedom in part to their association with the Juanistas, who minister to people in need on the northern frontier. Eight years ago, Sister Zuluaga saw the vulnerability of Haitian market girls and started a program of vocational, health and character education that focuses on AIDS and HIV prevention. Supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund and Catholic Relief Services, the project, Children and Adolescents Working for a Shared Future, has served 4,150 children and adolescents on both sides of the border.
Antoinette and Guerline were members of Sister Zuluaga’s first group, and they are the only two members to have avoided getting pregnant.
Sister Zuluaga said that after this first group of youth, the Juanistas learned how important it is to enroll these kids in school and assist their families so that so much pressure to earn money is not placed on the young women. She also counseled the youth on a very personal level to improve their self-esteem.
“One objective of our work has been for the girls to not get pregnant,” Sister Zuluaga said. “But it is a reality that these girls are in very dire situations, that they are extremely vulnerable.”
A groundbreaking study of children's sexual behavior on the border revealed just how vulnerable. Nearly half of the children and adolescents interviewed in Ouanaminthe reported having had coital sex. The study, which was conducted for Sister Zuluaga’s project to evaluate the risk of HIV and AIDS, also found that more than a third of children had had sex by the age of 10.
Antoinette is luckier than many. She has a healthy family life. Her parents are at home and both work, although they have had setbacks. Her father is a farm worker and her mother once had a business but has been reduced to selling fresh corn out of the house.
Guerline’s father abandoned the family when she was young and she hasn’t heard from him since. She has three more years to finish school because she had to stop so many times: Her mother needed her to work.
Of the pair, Antoinette is the more rambunctious character. Antoinette said some of her other friends disagree with her style and get irritated with her: They play by the rules and cross the river at 8. Antoinette seems determined to take extra measures to win.
She is the junior partner in a business arrangement with her cousin, who owns the merchandise. She gets a percentage of what she sells, which usually amounts to $3 a day.
She is eager to her have own business and boldly asked a group of U.S. visitors if they could set her up.
Antoinette can’t work full-time as long as she’s in school, but her pitch started a serious discussion about what resources might be available to support a determined young Haitian woman’s startup business.
One possibility for Antoinette is to join other merchants in a micro-lending pool, although her business doesn’t generate enough profit for her to accumulate enough savings to join.
“It’s the Haitian culture – they just love to sell,” Sister Zuluaga said. “If she were able to get some merchandise of her own, she could really take off running.”
Catholic San Francisco Assistant Editor Rick DelVecchio recently spent eight days in Haiti and the Dominican Republic to report on migrants and refugees, whose vulnerability as they cross national borders in search of a better life is a growing humanitarian concern for the Church and for civil authorities worldwide. The trip was organized by Catholic Relief Services. The itinerary highlighted CRS-backed efforts to aid migrants – efforts involving personal courage and risk by people in the Church and their beneficiaries. This is the third installment in a five-part series. Part 1, “Once someone exists, they always try to find a better way,” appeared in the Nov. 20 issue. Part 2, “Haitian migrants face violence, abuse,” appeared in the Dec. 4 issue.
From December 11, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
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