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Stolen Children
A tradition separates children from parents while they work in other people's homes.
Last Modified: 18 Jun 2009 06:36 GMT



Watch part two

Before the dawn, an army of children rises in Port-au-Prince. Small kids, skinny teenagers, they go to the pumps for water, the market for food.

Sandy is one of them. She and her brother Edward, are 'restavecs', from the French words, reste avec, 'to stay with'. They are slave children, taken from their impoverished rural families on a false promise of a better life in the city. There are 330,000 restavecs in Haiti.

Brother and sister are living with a 'tante' in a slum, a woman who beats and whips them. She is not really their aunt – she is their mistress. They cook and clean for sixteen children and adults. 

Sandy and Ed know that Haiti was the world's first free black nation. They feel their captivity is a gross injustice. They dream of escaping and finding their parents. They are not sure where their real family lives - all they remember is that it is somewhere in Jeremy province, far from Port-au-Prince.

Sandy and Ed have met Marlene, a woman who runs a makeshift school for restavecs. She has promised to help them escape to Jeremy. There is no guarantee they will find their parents – or that the parents will want them back. Al Jazeera follows Sandy and Ed's journey home.

Source:
Al Jazeera
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