I chose to Talk about the story the children of the sea and talk about the leader’s response lens. The story portrays the loss of political freedom as people are forced to flee their homeland Haiti where they were born. The writer Danticat writes this story on a boat as they are on the sea bound for freedom in America. In my personal life experience, growing up in the east African Region of African coast Kenya. I could see refugees from the neighboring countries like Somalia living in camps as they escaped from their neighboring country due to political instability

I could only imagine how the land in which they were born had turned into hell on earth for them. While in high school I could hear stories, watch on television and imagine how people were getting killed due to the crazy political regimes hungry for power. In this short story, the writer and other “lucky” people have managed to escape their country on a boat. The man reveals that their boat is bound for America, specifically Miami. He wonders how much farther they are going yet and prays that they don’t experience a storm. He also writes about the other people onboard the boat. One of them is a pregnant girl with razor mark scars on her face. Looking at her makes the male letter writer happy that there are no young children on this boat, because it would break his heart, “looking into their empty faces” and remembering “the hopelessness of their future” in Haiti. Other characters aboard include some Protestants who see themselves as Job or the Children of Israel. They say, “the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away,” which causes the letter writer to ask what more there is to take from him.

 

 

The story reminds me of how most parents including my own mother struggled back in the village as I grew up so that we could get our daily bread, sometimes sacrificing a lot and getting to do the most difficult tasks. Reading this short story further opened my eyes and made me realize how political instability can bring harm to its citizens, the two lovers on a boat make us understand the difficult situation through their writing. The coup hurts everyone, and the outside people are not helping at all. The story has also made me curious and made me want to find out more stories about difficult situations that could have been written and never brought to light for people to understand through publishing them.

The story has also made me to view the world as a good place and it can be to some people while to the rest it is a very hostile environment. The story of Haiti still breaks my heart. The pregnant girl in the boat gives birth and the baby finally dies.  “the boat, Célianne finally throws her baby’s corpse overboard. Shortly after it sinks below the waves, she jumps in after it, committing suicide. Everyone is in shock, but fear of the sharks in the area prevents a rescue mission. Besides, the boat is flooding in earnest now, the tar no longer holding g up. Everything must go, including the notebook the male letter writer has been using for his letters. Though the other passengers remain hopeful that the Coast Guard will find them before the boat sinks, the male letter writer isn’t as optimistic. He imagines himself living as a child of the sea among others “who have escaped the chains of slavery to form a world beneath the heavens and the blood-drenched earth” (Children of the sea Danticat).

The female letter writer finally finds the words to thank her father for saving her life. As he waves away her gratitude, his hand moves quickly in the air, resembling a black butterfly. The woman tries to run away from the sight, but it is too late. The news comes via radio that another boat has sunk off the coast of the Bahamas. One of the articles I read about the Haitian refugee immigrants in an Article Je suis Haitian really touched my heart” For them, failing academically wasn’t an option because they had so much more to lose.
 I recall once giving a composition assignment to a 9th grade class in which students were to explore their aspirations. Most wrote about going to the USA, getting rich, meeting popular entertainers, and eating American ‘fast’ food. The one Haitian child in the class (a girl) wrote about her professional ambitions, the support of her family for such, and the efforts she would make to give back to her parents for that support.
 Many Haitian adults were engaged in menial jobs, as handymen, gardeners, cleaners – jobs that some Bahamians, although unskilled, wouldn’t be caught dead doing. They toiled much, complained little, and seemed resigned to accepting the platitudes and the condescension of their bosses. And not only employers; I’ve heard Bahamians from every stratum of society taunt and trivialize Haitian migrants for their appearance, their manner of speech, their illegal status; even the submissiveness that is expected of them as a matter of course. The Haitian refugees have little such option. From a country wracked by political upheaval, poverty and natural disaster, they continue to hemorrhage, fleeing in makeshift boats. They continue to flounder on the open seas and lose their lives. They continue to surge northward, and they continue to beat the odds in whatever new settings they encounter.
 I identify and commiserate with those who continue to struggle and with those who ‘make it’. In this context, “Je suis Haitian!” (The boat people’s plight and deadly perseverance).

https://prezi.com/m/efau68shedtv/children-of-the-sea