Kindness of Montrealers overwhelms refugees
Joanne Clotaire tours her twobedroom apartment in Montreal North as though it’s the Palace of Versailles.
Here are the table and chairs Nathalie brought the other night, along with pizza and Cokes for the boys, she says, showing off the kitchen.
There are now two sofas in the living room, she points out, like a model on the Price is Right, and did you see the boys’ beds?
Lucas, waking up on his seventh birthday last week in his own bed, did not want to leave it. Wendy and Sheila brought the beds, Clotaire continues, moving through the sunny bedroom, along with a desk and dressers, and they wouldn’t even let her make up the beds herself.
Clotaire tried to help move some of the furniture in on Saturday, as an assembly line of strangers showed up at her door, but Eric and Ian and Richard, covered in sweat by now, wouldn’t have it.
“They treated me like I was a princess or a woman who had just given birth,” Joanne says, re-enacting the whole scene with gusto.
“To say thank you is not enough.” Then, with a flash, she bends down and dumps a whole box of Lego on the floor for the boys to play with, as if to say, “now we’re home.”
Just two weeks ago, Clotaire, along with Looandjee, 8, and Lucas, had moved into an empty apartment with barely a dime to their name and nowhere to sit. The three of them were sharing a double bed donated by the local church.
“I was so discouraged, where would I find the money to buy all these things, with $1,000 a month?” Clotaire said.
Having arrived with $3 in her wallet, one of thousands to cross the border at Roxham Rd. in July, the monthly cheque she would receive as a refugee claimant would pay the rent and her phone bill as well as some groceries. But nothing else.
Then the phone started ringing. After an article appeared in the Montreal Gazette, recounting the family’s eight-year odyssey from Haiti to Ecuador to Brazil then north again to Florida and finally to Montreal, total strangers called and emailed Clotaire offering to help.
In came the children’s books, the globe, the towels, sheets, curtains, dishes and winter clothes from people across Montreal.
“I couldn’t have imagined it. I don’t even know these people and they are calling me to say I’m coming to see you, what do you need? They have treated me like a daughter.”
Not all is rosy for the Clotaires. After arriving in the United States, Joanne’s husband, Louinel, who once taught French in Ecuador, was detained for nine months, then promptly deported.
Clotaire speaks to him every day and together they search for a way to all be together again. It’s an ongoing quest.
Last week, she could hear gunfire in the background while they spoke, as police and protesters clashed in Port-au-Prince.
“I have everything I need now, except my husband,” Clotaire says.
She’s also still working on getting the kids registered for school. “I went to see the school again yesterday and they said, ‘call us on the 15th.’ But it was already the 13th! I guess I have to be patient.”
She has also applied for a work permit, and was told it would take about 30 days to come through. Trained as a nurse in Haiti, she hopes with some French lessons and additional training she will eventually be able to work as a nurse in Montreal.
“But I’ll do whatever kind of work I can find. It doesn’t matter what. I need to work.”
She is overwhelmed and puzzled by another gift she received last Wednesday. While so many other migrants in Montreal find themselves in the same situation as Clotaire two weeks ago — an estimated 6,000 people came across the border in August — a mysterious benefactor bought her a new fridge and stove.
The person who bought the appliances did not want their name known by anyone, not least Clotaire, but hoped that when the boys are older they would remember the gesture and pay it forward.
“I want to meet this person! Who is it? I don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman!” Clotaire exclaims.
“If I could meet them I would get down on my knees like this. That’s the truth. Because thank you is not enough.”