THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9410040464
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: JACK DORSEY
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
The endless fighting makes no sense.
It didn't 24 years ago when Jacqueline Moise was 4 and living in Haiti, where her grandfather was murdered.
It doesn't today, said Moise, a Navy petty officer 2nd class, as she watched the shoreline of Port-au-Prince from the decks of the 2nd Fleet command ship Mount Whitney.
Anchored three miles from the city's downtown, Moise, a safety petty officer, wanted to go ashore and see her grandmother and the dozens of aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews who live near the capital.
``I want to visit again,'' she said. ``One day I will, but not now. Today the bullets have no name.''
The occupation by U.S. troops of Haiti had just begun as Moise, of Norfolk, reflected on the two decades she has known her former country from afar and the troubles she sees ahead.
She thinks she knows why Haiti has so many troubles.
Her grandfather, apparently wealthy because he owned considerable property and rented out homes, was an aide to a brigadier general in ``Papa Doc'' Duvalier's army and later worked for his son ``Baby Doc.''
But he was poisoned during some sort of power struggle, according to Moise.
``He was killed for power,'' she said.
Later, when Moise was a teenager in high school, a family friend - ``who was like a father to me'' - was beheaded.
``Everybody is insane. They want to be in charge. It's always a power thing,'' she said.
Her family fled to the Bahamas in a banana boat, much as Haitians are fleeing today. Moise, who has a 4-year-old child in Florida, was raised in the United States.
``The people of Haiti are good people,'' she said. ``Life there is so easy. So simple. You can live off $100. They really are simple people and pure of heart.''
But there is a story Moise's mother tells that may explain why the tiny island nation of nearly 7 million people has had such hard luck.
There must be a reason, she quotes her mother as saying, for the endless dictatorships that have prevented the people from being governed as they want.
There must be a reason for the famine and killer hurricanes that have ruined most of the rice, bean and coffee crops over the years.
And there is, according to the folklore of the nation.
Haiti, a French colony dating to 1677, attained its independence in 1804 after a rebellion led by former slave Toussaint L'Ouverture.
But the Haitians killed L'Ouverture.
``They killed the person who helped get them out of slavery,'' said Moise.
``It's almost like a spell now. He's the one who took them out of slavery and his own people killed him. Now it is like an ongoing thing. It doesn't stop.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Jacqueline Moise and her family fled Haiti more than two decades
ago.
by CNB