The Foreign Service Journal, June 2005

of activity, with signs both in Creole and Spanish, and the noise of the place rang in his ears like the surf he listened to as a young boy on Saturdays, when he escaped the con- fines of Cap-Haitien with friends and explored the rocky shoreline of Haiti’s northern coast. He realized that the route from his guard post to Quanaminthe was seldom if at all used; the people had to come from somewhere, and he observed that most arrived from the mountains many kilometers north of where he was stationed, using the main road from Fort- Liberte. This fact did not diminish the importance of his post, for as far as he was concerned most people were a nuisance, and the lack of popularity of his road afforded him the comfort and peace of life with his family. He had lingered on in Quanaminthe only an hour or so. He saluted and called out a greeting to the Dominicans who sat in the shade of their well-bunkered, sandbagged post on the other side of the river, situated next to a yellow and red painted gate barely wide enough for a car to pass through. They ignored him, and he real- ized that his coat, with its identifying insignia of a govern- ment official, was hanging limply over his arm. That trip to the border had been two years earlier. He made more frequent visits to Desmoulins, where every three months he collected his salary from the provincial official that passed through, and chatted with the towns- people about current events. Occasionally when they needed supplies, his wife made the journey, bringing back a small sack of rice, and less-desired vegetables, her shoul- ders and neck muscles twisted strong by the weight upon them. H e thought the smoke was coming from Fort-Liberte, or perhaps from down along the coast, maybe even Cap-Haitien. He was unsure. There was too much of it, casting an angry gray pallor just above the horizon. In places the smoke curled upon itself and drifted lazily toward the clouds. He was annoyed at the way it disrupt- ed the colors of the sky to which he was accustomed. Late in the afternoon the chimeres (the ruling party’s death squads) arrived at the guard post. Their arrival was preceded by the sound of their arguing with each other, accents slurred by city living, rising from the road below the guardhouse, amplified as the words bounced across the boulders. They were three, with two propping up a young boy between them. The largest of them, a young man in sunglasses that seemed too dark and too expensive compared to the rest of his clothes, slowed for a moment upon seeing the guardhouse, motioning for his companions to stop with a small movement of his hand. “You border guard?” the man called out in Creole with the sharpness of a city dweller. It was not really a ques- tion, and though Jean-Philippe could not see the man’s eyes behind the sunglasses, he guessed they did not stray far from the rifle he held at an angle across his waist. Jean-Philippe was unsure how to respond. Officially, the military had been disbanded years ago, after the Americans had helped the president stand again on his feet. He had come here to his post when an old friend of his father’s, with a place in the low levels of the Cap- Haitien municipality, told the family that the government was looking for a young man to define and uphold the nation’s territorial integrity. The choice for Jean-Philippe, to abandon city life for a rugged existence in the isolated mountains, was balanced by his recent marriage and the prospect of protection from life’s arbitrariness in the city. Two childhood friends had been killed that year by the random hand of violence that wandered freely about Cap- Haitien’s streets, and he was beginning to feel the pull of that romantic, yet corrosive struggle against authority. In truth, he had not thought very long before accepting the position. “Yes, this is a guard post,” Jean-Philippe said finally, noting that the men all carried weapons of their own, small pistols tucked into their waistbands, and careful not to move his hands, “but to reach the border is a walk longer than a morning from here.” The men all stared at him, until one of the others snort- ed, “He is a f---ing joke, that’s what. C’est une frontiere que n’est meme pas une frontiere.” Jean-Philippe did not reply, and instead looked at the one whose weight was being supported by the others. He was quite young, and seemed only semi-conscious. The boy’s head hung limply to one side. His bright yellow Adidas shirt was stained with a patch of blood, therusted crimson patch as large as Jean-Philippe’s hand, falling F O C U S J U N E 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 Rakesh Surampudi joined the Foreign Service in 2000, and has served in Mexico City and Santo Domingo. He is currently assigned to the Office of U.N. Political Affairs in the International Organi- zations Bureau.