http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/28/v-print/1897364/a-12-year-old-boy-is-s
tarting.html
A 12-year-old boy is starting over by shining shoes
The Miami Herald, BY JACQUELINE CHARLES AND GERARDO REYES, Posted on Thu,
Oct. 28, 2010
SANTIAGO, Dominican Republic -- He shuffles through the busy streets of this
Dominican city, a homemade wooden shoeshine box in one hand and a reminder
of home -- an emblem of his favorite Haitian artist -- around his neck.
At 12 years old, he doesn't know the date of his birth and has never
celebrated his birthday. He only knows his age, he says, because that is all
his parents told him before handing him over to a stranger in January.
Ten days after a devastated Haiti began digging through the rubble from
the horrific Jan. 12 earthquake, Luckner arrived in Santiago de los
Caballeros as a young foreigner smuggled across the border. The three-day
trek, mostly on foot, cost $40. Luckner is among thousands of Haitian kids
who have been smuggled into the Dominican Republic since the earthquake.
Some have been forced to do menial jobs -- or worse.
``I came so that I could go to school,'' he said, sitting inside a
community center, amid the background sound of laughter from little boys.
``When I think about it, I cry when I see I am not in school. There is
no school.''
For Luckner and countless other Haitian children seen on this city's
streets and parks, there is only work.
``I shine shoes,'' he said. ``Some days I can make $1 or $2. Some days
I can make nothing.''
LANGUAGE GAP
In the Dominican Republic for just three months, his Spanish is limited.
The social workers who help the shoeshine boys have a limited vocabulary in
Creole. There is just one worker at the center who knows the language.
Sitting inside a back room at Acci?n Callejera, his face, with its long
eyelashes and serious composure, reflects innocence.
But even his Creole nickname ``Medizan'' -- someone who speaks ill of
someone else -- and his words reveal a child far beyond his pre-teen years.
Still, clues to his life in Haiti reveal themselves in small ways. Although
able to write his first name, he cannot spell his last -- lack of money
caused him to drop out of school after the first three months each year.
With each cent he earns here, he plots his return home to Mapou, a rural
village just across the river from Plaisance in northern Haiti.
``I feel much more comfortable in Haiti,'' he said.
For one, he said, he never had to walk as much.
``They lied to me about life here,'' he said, referring to his older
brother and parents who encouraged him to leave. Luckner's father declined
to speak to Miami Herald reporters and his mother could not be located.
The social workers inside Acci?n Callejera had not heard Luckner's story
until he told it to The Miami Herald. He arrived one day on his own, joining
the dozens of other shoeshine boys who are attracted to the center because
of its twice-a-day meals that cost 10 cents. The meals are an attraction,
workers say, but there are also other opportunities if the children want it,
such as health checkups and school, with their guardian's permission.
And then there is just the chance to be a kid.
``If the children do not work, they don't eat,'' said Cynthia Lora, a
coordinator at Acci?n Callejera. ``These children, what is their reality? We
don't really know. What do they have to do to survive? And the girls, they
are much more vulnerable than the boys. They are exploited for various acts.
In other words, who is protecting these children?''
Still, if there is one difference Lora has noticed between the Haitian
and Dominican children, it is in their vision for the future.
``The Haitian children have more vision than the Dominican children,''
she said. ``They want to progress, they want to get out of their situation.
Their life is not easy.''
In the Dominican Republic, there are laws to protect children. But nobody
cares about these kids, said Dajab?n Jesuit priest Regino Martinez, director
of the Border Solidarity Foundation.
Countless and invisible, they are ever present at red lights, tourist
hotels and sidewalks. Dressed in ragged clothes and sometimes as young as 3,
they are forced to fend for themselves as they beg for change or shine
shoes.
Almost all have been smuggled by adults and even other children, lured
by a dream of a better life across the 200-plus miles separating this
tourism-driven nation from its poorer western neighbor.
`SAME STORY'
Social workers and activists say that while the trafficking network
involves both Haitians and Dominicans, it's a loose-knit group.
``How do all of these children cross the frontier?'' Lora said. ``All
tell the same story. They cross without difficulty.''
She said children 9 years old, or younger, are coming. They travel with
other adults, and sometimes with other children who serve as guides. When,
or if caught, they never give their real names. One example is the
17-year-old alleged trafficker of several girls -- at least one of whom
admits to being raped.
Since the quake, the number of Haitian children arriving in the Dominican
Republic has increased, they say. More than 7,300 girls and boys have been
smuggled into the Dominican Republic.
In 2009, the figure was 950, according to Jano Sikse Border Network, a
nongovermental organization that monitors human rights abuses along 10
border points and keeps a monthly head count.
Some sneaked in to be reunited with family members after the Dominican
government opened the borders. Others were brought by traffickers as part of
a racket to exploit children as prostitutes, shoeshine boys and street
beggars.
Sometimes, the children have been ``rented'' for the day by adults
seeking to make money off unsuspecting motorists.
``The majority don't know how to speak Spanish,'' said a former Dominican
immigration official. ``This is not an easy problem.''
NEW SURROUNDING
Each morning, Luckner awakes inside the wooden shack he shares with his
brother, 19-year-old Nelson and Nelson's pregnant girlfriend inside the
dusty yard of a butcher shop off a main road. This is where his brother
first suggested he should work, Luckner said, shortly after his arrival.
``I told him `No. I can't stand the sight of blood,' '' he said.
Eight days later, Nelson walked into the house and handed him a shoeshine
kit -- liquid, powder along with wood and the pattern to make the shoeshine
box.
``He said you are going to shine shoes,'' Luckner recalled. Later, Nelson
took him to the heart of the city.
``He showed me places I could stand to shine shoes, where I could get
customers.''
His other advice:
``Keep to myself, and not to make any friends,'' Luckner said, his
brother's words echoing that of their mother, Eliana, in her weekly phone
conversations.
The next day, he was out the door for what has become a daily grind.
TOUGH WALK
``When I was in Haiti, I never walked like this,'' he said, adding that
the long walk alone makes him want to return home. It's a 45-minute trek
from his neighborhood to the center of town, where some days he doesn't even
make it back home with his few earnings. A ``thief,'' he said, stands on a
bridge waiting for him and other shoeshine boys, searching their pockets and
stealing their earnings.
On the days he makes it home with money, he hands it over to Nelson, he
said, for safekeeping. He works everyday, he said, except for Tuesday.
``That's a day of problems for me,'' he said, revealing a superstitious
nature. ``I don't go out.''
He dreams of earning enough money shining shoes to return to Haiti, pay
his school fees and buy a goat -- to replace his baby cow that died just
days after he left home. He estimates that the goat cost $50.
Breakfast and lunch are often eaten at Acci?n Callejera, where
shoeshiners leave their boxes at the door -- and for a few moments the
shoeshine boys can become boys as they run around and horse play, paint
boxes and chatter.
Still, it is not the life he envisioned.
Life in Haiti was simpler, but it was filled with suffering, he said.
He was the oldest of seven children living at home. His mother lived in
Cap-Haitien where she sold spaghetti and other staples -- sending food to
Luckner, his father and two sisters, ages 10 and 8, when she could.
``We could spend two days with no food,'' he said.
He awoke long before dawn on a Friday morning in January in Mapou, the day
he would begin his journey.
Nelson arranged the trip and contacted the smuggler. The first payment --
$15 -- was made as soon as Luckner arrived in Cap-Haitien. The rest, $25,
was paid by Nelson when he picked up his brother.
On the morning he left home, Luckner placed one shirt and a pair of pants
in a plastic bag and headed out the door. His clothes -- on his back and in
the bag -- and the faux leather necklace with a portrait of Gracia Delva,
his favorite Haitian konpa musician, were his only possessions.
The prized necklace cost him 50 cents, and would be his one constant
reminder of home until it broke a few months later.
The walk from the house to the stop to catch the bus to Cap-Haitien was
a few minutes. Once in Cap-Haitien, he went to a meeting spot to await his
passeur.
He wasn't alone. Nineteen others were also waiting. They took a second bus
to Ouanaminthe, getting off just before the customs station to finish the
rest of the journey on foot through back woods.
Just miles down the road, thousands of Haitians were already making their
way across the binational bridge separating the two nations. Below, others
waded through the Massacre River, dodging border guards, as they attempted
to make it into the Dominican Republic.
For the next couple of days, Luckner and the group would walk nonstop,
mostly in silence not to alarm Dominican guards and their flashing lights,
used to detect suspecting smugglers.
The youngest in the group, he would stay close to the smuggler. Hungry
and weak from days without food and water, he stumbled and fell at one
point.
``I got up and kept walking,'' he said.
Occasionally someone would ask: ``Can you walk? Can you walk?''
``We never crossed any Dominican military,'' he said. ``We didn't see
them at all.''
DAILY GRIND
It's been nine months since Luckner arrived in Santiago, and his life
has not changed that much. But those who know him say he has changed. He
sends money home to help his parents and he no longer gives money to his
brother for safekeeping.
``He comes and goes and I don't even know,'' Nelson said, adding that he
has no idea what his brother does.
Luckner still talks about going to school but has lost the passion. Each
day, the dream gets deferred.
Asked what motivated him to come to Santiago, Luckner pauses.
``I came in search of life.''
