Learning From the Past

The house of a notorious Haitian militia leader has been transformed from a torture chamber into a school.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Under the 30-year dictatorship of the Duvaliers from 1956 to 1986, "Papa Doc" and his son "Baby Doc" imposed their will on Haiti through a widely feared and brutal militia called the Tonton Macoute.

Lionel Woolly, known as "Little Eye," was one of the militia's most notorious leaders. Woolly had a reputation for seizing homes he liked and evicting the inhabitants with no notice. When Baby Doc fled Haiti in 1986 in the face of mounting opposition, Woolly and other Macoutes also went into exile.

Left behind were the seized properties, which squatters quickly occupied. One of those properties was a large estate with a pool on a hillside in the swanky Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Petionville.

A bright spot risen from Haiti's dark past » View

It took 15 years, but the house that Woolly had seized and reportedly used as a torture chamber for his political opponents was transformed into a vibrant community school, serving nearly 600 students from kindergarten through the 10th grade.

"When the house was finally given to us, there were 67 people, all living as squatters on the property. It was like a farm. There were pigs and chickens. It was filthy," says Rea Dol, the school's co-founder and a member of the organization known as Society of Providence United for the Development of Petionville (SOPUDEP).

Not only was the building in shambles, but there were psychological hurdles to transforming the property as well. Many in the neighborhood told the members of SOPUDEP that Woolly had used a dark, damp room under the swimming pool as his own private torture chamber, killing and dismembering those he deemed a threat to the Duvalier regime or to his own authority.

"The chamber below the swimming pool," Dol says, "is where the torture took place, but we had our groundskeeper fill in the pool with dirt as well as seal off that room."

When the city officially turned over the house to SOPUDEP in the summer of 2001, it took months to get the property in shape before students arrived that fall. There was also the matter of relocating the squatter families. As an incentive, Dol and co-founder Jean-Jacque Bataille decided to allow the children of the families to attend the school for free — giving an opportunity to those who might otherwise never have had a chance to get an education.

For students, a school and a refuge » View

Visitors walking around the "campus" can see the progression of grades simply by climbing the stairs. Kindergarten and first grade students, dressed in pink shirts and jumpers, sing songs on the ground level of the house in classrooms separated by walls that rise only to chest level. Upstairs, older students, dressed in blue, study math and history.

Money at the SOPUDEP school is always tight, says Dol, with only 10 percent of the students paying the full tuition of $6 a month, 50 percent paying partial tuition and 40 percent paying no tuition at all. Some teachers haven't been paid in weeks.

"We're a private Christian school," says Dol, "but we don't want to turn students away."

For Michela Gestime, 15, and her 13-year-old sister Mooly, the SOPUDEP school is their only chance at an education. Their father is an unemployed mechanic; their mother, a street vendor. Since they can't afford the tuition, they are not required to pay anything. The sisters are several years behind the rest of their age group in school, but they say they are happy to be in school at all.

The school does have some support from international contributors, but the facilities are very basic. Even the water supply is suspect, with storage cisterns filled with floating refuse.

There is no cafeteria, so at lunchtime the children gather on the driveway and buy food like flavored ice or meat-filled pastries from street vendors.

The computer lab is a collection of mid-90s models, many of them in various states of disrepair. There is only one dial-up Internet connection for the whole school, and that is in Dol and Battaille's office.

"The computers are more of a reward," says Dol, "rather than a regular course of study. We're just not equipped for that right now."

But regardless of the challenges, Dol and Battaille see the school as a small sign of hope that even the most horrific aspects of Haiti's past can be turned around — not just as a history lesson, but as a place to learn.

To learn more about the SOPUDEP school or to donate, you can visit their website.  

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