Using Music to Escape a Tragic Life

By Vantz Brutus

Sensenn had lived one tragedy after another. When his parents died, the 9 year old had to live with an aunt whose life was already difficult to say the least.

In exchange for a room and food, Sensenn had to perform household “chores.” One of the child’s daily responsibilities was to supply the entire house with running water.

 Like the “Sisyphean task” in Greek mythology, each day the 9-year-old Sensenn would trek back and forth – seven times a day – carrying large containers of water between a public supply and the house. Unlike a myth, hauling the heavy water was a daily reality for the boy.

Only after this and other domestic labors did he have an opportunity to enjoy “the bread of instruction,” which is what attending school is called in Haiti. Besides going to school in the impoverished, dangerous slum of Cité Soleil, often he would attend classes on an empty stomach.

One afternoon after school, he was trying to cross the road but could not get past the fast-moving traffic. A young man who was watching Sensenn offered to help the child.

Sensenn thanked his benefactor and, feeling confident, began talking about his difficult daily life – particularly how he was whipped and insulted for the slightest mistakes. Despite this miserable life, Sensenn told the stranger of his dreams of becoming a musician like his late father.

Fortunately for Sensenn, the young man was Jola Thélusmé, a member of the Collectif des Notables de Cité Soleil, which runs a music school in an area once known for armed violence.

This music school, which receives support from PADF’s Project “Kore Dwa Moun”/Protecting Human Rights (which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development), coaches  girls who are victims or witnesses of violence in Cité Soleil. There are 200 students at the school.

More than a simple music school, CONOCS provides hope and restores self-esteem to children who have lived with violence. “The goal of this school is to offer an alternative for children in Cité Soleil,” says Pastor Enock Joseph, founder the school of the program. “We now offer a musical instrument so they do not succumb to the temptation to touch the weapons,”

Though it is a school for girls, Jola convinced CONOCS to accept the bright-eyed, intelligent boy.

Sensenn was able to select his own instrument – drums. A psychologist at the center had suggested that children who are victims of violence should consider percussion instruments as a way to help them better release their frustrations.

 “I love this instrument,” says Sensenn. “I feel at ease with it. I have fun while making music.” After he becomes proficient with the drums, he wants to learn how to play the guitar.

Jola also met with Sansenn’s aunt and convinced her to treat the child properly – or he would remove the boy from her care. Since then, Sansenn’s home life has improved.

Sensenn now attends CONOCS three to four times a week for two hours a visit. He also attends public school for his basic education and finished second in his class at the end of the last school year. He says he is particularly fond of math.

For Sensenn, it was his good fortune that traffic that particular afternoon. Instead, he found a crosswalk to new opportunities.

Learning to Smile After 7 Years

Seven years ago, Phanel’s mother was struggling, trying to sell rice in a bustling street market. With no one to help her provide for her family, she was living with her five children in a small house. As the Haitian proverb says, the shack “could shield from the sun but not from the rain.”

When the roof finally crashed in, she had no choice but to abandon her house to seek refuge with friends.

There was no room for her to take her children along so they were sent to live with various other people. Along with his older brother, Phanel live with a relative in a distant part of the city. Shortly after, Phanel was kicked out for lack of space.

At just 6 years old, he found himself all alone. He lived for a year in a tiny shack in his old slum, begging for food in the neighborhood and occasionally seeing his mother.

When his then 15-year-old brother heard of a PADF-supported program that helped children like Phanel, he went back for him. Phanel was taken to Father Simon, a Catholic priest who dedicated his life to offering a home to children who didn’t have one.

Today the 13-year-old Phanel enjoys fun, games and is going to school without having to worry about food and shelter. A few days a week after school, Phanel and the other children go to the center’s workshop to learn a trade. He chose shoemaking.

After the workshop, he tirelessly draws in his notebook the intricate models of shoes he will make when he grows up. Timidly, he shows off the most important thing he learned thus far – how to smile.

One Boy’s Journey to Hope

Today, Baby Auguste is 15 years old and only in the second grade. Until a few years ago, his days consisted of trying to find food for him and his family to eat, rather than learning how to spell and write his name.

When Baby Auguste was much younger, his father occasionally crossed the border to the neighboring Dominican Republic to buy fighting roosters. Usually he left for just a few days and would return to sell the fighting roosters in Haiti. One day, his father left and never came back.

At that time, Baby had only been in school for a year – but his father’s disappearance meant an end to his formal education. Not only could his family not afford the tuition, they would go on for days without any food in the house. Young Baby Auguste had to do what he could to find something to put in his aching belly.

For years, he spent his days roaming the streets of the mountainside slum where they lived or the neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince. Baby Auguste would wash car windows on the city’s main throughways, begging for a mere few Haitian Gourds. For 10 Gourds, he could buy a cup of coffee or some crackers.

"I liked to walk,” he recalls. "I couldn’t bear to stay idle in the one-room shack with nothing to eat. So I would walk all day in the streets.”

One day, in a street market, a social worker came to him and told him about Timkatec, a PADF-supported center for at-risk youth. At Timkatec, street kids could find shelter, eat three meals a day and go to school. Shy at first, Baby reluctantly came to visit the center. He has now been living there for three years.

The center encourages the children to see their families, and Baby Auguste occasionally sees his mother and often visits with his older sister.

"If I never had found this place, I really don’t know what I would have become,” he says. "My life was without any direction and meaning. I might have really turned bad.”

Baby Auguste now has aspirations, thanks to living in the PADF-supported shelter. He wants to become a clothing designer. His true dream is to become a "great artist” and have a career as a singer.