PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Students often vomit or urinate when gunfire erupts outside their school in northern Port-au-Prince.
When they do, the school’s principal, Roseline Ceragui Louis, discovers that there is only one way to try to calm the children and keep them safe: have them lie down on the classroom floor while she sings quietly.
“You can’t work in that environment,” he said. “It is catastrophic. “They are traumatized.”
Haiti’s capital is under attack by powerful gangs that control 80% of the city.
On February 29, the gangs launched coordinated attacks against key infrastructure. The attacks have left more than 2,500 people dead or injured in the first three months of the year. Now, in a bid to help save Haiti’s younger generation, the country is undertaking a broader effort to dispel a long-standing taboo about seeking therapy and talking about mental health.
At a recent training session in a relatively safe area of Port-au-Prince, parents learned games to make their children smile. Parents are often so distraught and discouraged that they have no energy to care for children, said Yasmine Déroche, who trains adults to help children overcome the trauma inflicted by persistent gang violence.
Gunmen burned police stations, stormed Haiti’s two largest prisons to free more than 4,000 inmates and shot at the country’s main international airport, which closed on March 4 and has not reopened. The violence has also paralyzed Haiti’s largest seaport.
Meanwhile, some 900 schools have closed, affecting around 200,000 children.
“We must fight this social inequality so that all children, all young people, can have the same opportunities to go to school, work and earn a living,” said Chrislie Luca, president of the nonprofit organization Hearts for Change. for disadvantaged people. Children of Haiti. “These are all problems that have led us to where we are today, with the country on the brink.”
The UNICEF representative in Haiti said the violence has displaced more than 360,000 people, most of them women and children. Furthermore, at least a third of last year’s 10,000 victims of sexual violence were children, Bruno Maes said.
“Children have to fend for themselves, without assistance, without enough protection,” he said.
More than 80 children were killed or injured between January and March, a 55% increase from the last quarter of 2023 and “the most violent period for children in the country on record,” said Save the Children, a nonprofit organization. American profit.
Luca said those injured included two children who were hit in the head while walking to school and an 8-year-old girl who was playing inside her home when she was hit by a bullet that passed through her intestines and required emergency surgery.
“We are witnessing a lot of mental health issues,” Maes said. “This violence is traumatizing.”
Louis said his 10-year-old son cried every day “You’re going to die!” while he was on his way to school, and the violence did not allow the child to eat, sleep or play.
Louis remained determined, knowing that she had to be strong for him and his students.
“My heart is broken, but my students see my smile every day,” she said.
Still, many fell asleep in class, unable to concentrate after sleepless nights punctuated by gunfire.
Others had more important things on their minds.
“It’s hard to concentrate on school or concentrate on playing a game when the rest of your body is worried about whether your mom and dad will be alive when you get home from school,” said Steve Gross, founder of the nonprofit American profit Life. It’s the Good Playmaker project.
Some students are increasingly drawn to gangs and carry heavy weapons as they charge at drivers to pass safely through gang territory.
“Little children are traumatized and agitated,” said Nixon Elmeus, a teacher whose school closed in January. He recalled how his best student stopped talking after an encounter with gangs. Other students become violent: “Since the war started, the children themselves have behaved as if they were part of a gang.”
Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, a Haitian partner nonprofit aimed at helping children, held a teacher training session that Louis attended after gang violence forced his school to close in March. He learned which games were best for distracting students from the violence outside the school gates.
“How can I get these kids back?” she asked.
With hundreds of schools closed, online courses are for those who can afford Wi-Fi and a generator. Most Haitians often live in darkness due to chronic power outages.
Without school, high poverty and traumas such as having to dodge mangled bodies in the streets, children have become easy prey. Between 30% and 50% of members of armed groups are now children, Maes said.
“That’s a very sad reality,” he said.
A 24-year-old man who only offered his last name, Nornile, for security reasons, said he was in a gang for five years.
He said he joined because the gang gave him the money he needed and provided him with more food than his mother, a saleswoman, and his father, a bricklayer, could offer him and his seven siblings.
At night he worked as a security guard for the gang leader. During the day he ran errands and bought her food, clothes, sandals and other goods. Nornile said he was proud that the gang trusted him, but thought about quitting when one of his three brothers was killed by the gangs on June 16, 2022.
“The men of the ghetto do not fight for education or a hospital. They fight for territory,” he said. “They only care about themselves.”
Nornile left the gang two years after his brother’s death and began working for Luca’s non-profit organization.
“The reality of the gang is that the person may carry a gun, but in their mind, that’s not what they really want,” Nornile said.
Jean Guerson Sanon, co-founder and CEO of Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, highlighted the importance of parents interacting with children daily to improve their mental health.
“Sometimes, that’s all we have,” she said, noting that conversations about mental health remain largely taboo.
“If you go to see a psychologist it is because you are ‘crazy,’ and ‘crazy’ people are really discriminated against in Haiti,” he said.
At training on a recent Sunday, parents learned games for their children. One was mirroring the other person; another pretended that an inflatable ball was a piece of cheese that the child, posing as a mouse, had to steal.
At the end of the training, parents laughed as they made up different dance moves in a large circle to play with their children.
When asked to draw what a safe space meant to them, several of them drew their houses; some drew flowers; and one, Guirlaine Reveil, drew a man with a gun as she approached a police station, a real-life scenario that occurred a couple of years ago.
One parent, Celestin Roosevelt, said he tells his children, ages 2 and 3, that shooting is not a bad thing, a lie he called necessary.
“You have to find a way to live in your own country,” he said with an apologetic shrug.
At the end of the training, parents received a copy of the presentation, crayons, and a bouncy ball.
Déroche, who runs the program, observed how parents feel so overwhelmed that they are disconnected from their children’s needs.
“I know that the crisis we are experiencing now will have consequences that will take I don’t know how many years to solve,” he said.
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