A week later, I woke up with a boom! in the corridor.
Children screamed, the carers panicked, gunshots fired everywhere.
Shakily, I got up from my bed. There was hardly anyone else in the room.
One boy in the middle section of the room cowered under the sheets.
I walked towards him, and shook him a little.
'GO AWAY!! GO AWAY! GO AWAY! HELP!' he yelled.
'Shhhhhhhhhhh,' I assured, 'no one's going to hurt you. Come out from the bed, and I'll help you escape.'
'Please! Leave me alone!', he commanded more calmer now.
I would of listened to him but I couldn't just leave him there, knowing that the room could be invaded any second.
'Listen, I will leave you only if you just follow me! It isn't safe to stay here. It's too dangerous.'
Nervously, he pulled off the sheets and clinged onto me.
'Ok, ok,' he said, still shaking.
Guns fired again outside. The people who invaded were shouting commandments at everyone in a language that I didn't understand properly. Orphans wailed in distress.
'Come on,' I said to the boy. His name, if I can remember, was Johnathan,
the youngest of the group.
I picked him up and held him tightly, then I ran to the bathroom at the end of the corridor and locked the door. I switched off the light and took us into the last cubicle of the bathroom and locked that door as well.
'Now listen,' I said, as he started crying, 'you mustn't leave just yet. We have to escape somehow but it won't be easy. There are dangerous people outside who can kill you or me, so be careful. I'll go outside and see if its clear to leave. Stay here in the meantime, ok?'.
He nodded warily.
I quietly unlocked the cubicle door, tip-toed to the main bathroom dorr and unlocked it and crept back into the room. The gunshots outside had stopped. Everything was quiet. The building was eerie. Something wasn't right.
I jogged to the door and peeped through the key-hole. There was nobody there, or at least I couldn't see anybody.
Ever so carefully, I pulled open the door and looked outside.
There was blood spattered on the walls. Brandy lay dead on the floor, with five big holes in her chest that gushed blood.
There was nobody there, though. No matter how much I wanted to leave the room I just couldn't bring myself to step outside; too shocked on the bloody sight of St. Theresa's proprietor.
I stepped back in and closed the door.
On my way back into the cubicle I found John lying on the floor, face white as the snow that falls on the mountains in winter.
'Johnathan!' I cried quietly.
I shook him a bit, and he opened his eyes.
'Are you ok?'.
'What does it look like, newbie? I'm scared to death about those people. What if they come in here and kill us?!' he exclaimed weakly.
'No. They won't kill us, because they've taken the others away. They want to kidnap us, but we have a chance to escape.'
'CHANCE? CHANCE?' he shouted angrily, 'You think we have a chance to get out of this shit?'
'Just stay calm, ok?' I assured, 'We're gonna make it, I'll make sure. You won't die. You are not meant to.'
'How would you know? How do you even know what you're saying?' he weeped.
I looked at him in his dark, brown eyes. He looked back. He then sprang onto me and hugged me, emptying his buckets of tears onto my scrawny shoulders.
'I'm gonna die!' he screamed, 'I'M NOT GONNA MAKE IT! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE, ZANDER!'
'SHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!' I urged. If anyone heard we'd BE dead, like John was saying.
He wouldn't stop, no matter how much I rocked him or hugged him he wouldn't stop panicking, then all of a sudden the bedroom door slammed open.
Johnathan screamed.
I covered his mouth as tight as I could. I understood that he was frightened, but to save both of us I had to find a way to keep him quiet.
We heard footsteps slowly walking closer to the bathroom.
Beads of sweat broke out onto my forehead. Whoever it was, he was coming to where were.
John hid his face in my arms, shaking and crying more than I had ever seen.
The footsteps stopped outside the door. I was panick-stricken. Any moment now the invader would break down the bathroom door, find us in the last cubicle and drag us away squirming as vermin do, like they did to the others.
We waited for more than five minutes when I decided to stand up and look outside. John was still fearful, but not as much as before.
I peeped at all corners of the room. There seemed to be nobody in the room.
I waited again for another two minutes in the bathroom cubicle before I made my plan, and started explaining it to Johnathan.
'Listen, Johnathan, listen. I'm going back out to see if there's anybody there, and when the coast is clear, I'll come back and get you. But you have to be ready, ok?'
He nodded worryingly.
'Stay here,' I ordered.
Silently, I unlocked our cubicle and passed the showers to the main bathrrom door.
I looked outside again, and there was nobody in the room. Slowly, I passed the beds to the door, when from the back of my mind I remembered that there was a shadow behind the curtains behind me.
I stopped walking. I froze. I turned around steadily, preparing myself for any sudden movements.
I eyed the curtain, and my heart stopped pounding beneath my ribs.
There was no shadow. My eyes must have seen badly.
I sauntered to the door, and cautiously opened it. Squeezing my hands together, as I always do when I'm nervous, I looked about the bloody corridor. Other than the limp, cold body of Brandy, there was nobody else present.
Relaxed, I strode back into the bathroom, and my heart sank.
The last cubicle was left ajar, but I could see no one in it.
As I started to turn back, the bathroom door shut. But not by itself.
A tall, black man with a gun stood in front of it, keeping Johnathan tight in his arms.
Johnathan looked petrified, and the man sniggered at me.
He then started speaking in a language which I, at first, did not recognise. Quickly I realised that he was speaking in French, the only language that I had studied all my life as a second tongue.
It sounded a bit different to the typical French language, but I soon understood.
'You're friends are all gone. They were put in a lorry that will transport them to Haiti, and you will follow. Do not try to escape, or we will kill you.'
'What's he saying, Zander?!' Johanathan suddenly burst out loud.
'Shut up!' the man ordered.
'Don't worry, John. We just have to follow him. Try not to say anything else,' I advised calmly.
I explained to the man that I understood. On that, he opened the door and pushed me outside, with Johnathan still in his grip.
He hit me with his gun and ordered me to walk faster, so I hurried my speed.
On the way out, to my surprise there were more men. They were all dressed in torn shirts and dirty shorts.
'Look who I found,' our kidnapper said to his friends, 'these two pieces of shit were hiding in a cubicle, the last one 'cleverly'.'
The others chuckled a bit. They gave us a strange look, and led us into the elevator.
We arrived at the reception then we were pushed outside into the heat.
On the side of the road were parked about eleven large trucks ready to go wherever they were taking us.
I presumed that the lorries all contained the orphans.
'Will there be enough room?' one of the men asked the others.
'Of course! We've still got another orphanage to invade,' replied one of the others.
Johnathan and I were shoved into one of the green trucks.
In one there were at least fifty orphans cramped sitting down.
I was forced to stand up because of the limited space.
The trucks started to go.
It was a rather bouncy ride. I supported myself by pressing my hands on the ceiling of the lorry that I was in.
Most of the orphans were crying.
I felt so bad. Guilty that I had promised Johnathan safety, and now hope was scarce.
We stopped outside another orphanage, where we heard gun shootings and screams. Only a few came onto our trucks, but they were even younger than what we were. The journey was then short, because we were taken to the sea, where we were transported into ships.
Wherever we were going, I could tell that it was far.
*
After about two hours I just couldn't take standing up anymore. The blood in my arms had flowed into my body, leaving them colourless and senseless.
At last I put them down. The feeling was such a relief.
Most of the orphans were sleeping, whereas the rest were just sitting down with their eyes in a glance that seemed to look to nowhere.
I was one of the only ones standing up. It was very painful; my legs began shaking and I couldn't control them.
Eventually I had to sit. I gently moved a child beneath me to the left and sat my self on the hard floor of the spacious lorry.
I felt extremely dreary. Things had happened so fast, so unexpectedly that I just couldn't think anymore.
My mother came into mind. I was with her again by her deathbed, weeping a little then she kissed me. She smiled. I felt relaxed, but I wanted to ask her how to get me out of this situation. She only looked at me and gave me a small smile, assuring me that everything was going to be ok.
I hadn't realised how much time I was thinking for. I left my watch at the orphanage-the eerie, cold, life-less building that had taken care of me for three months before being savagely ransacked and partially destroyed.
The ship must have been moving fast, because after about another three hours it had come to an abrupt stop.
Our driver returned into the lorry and eventually the huge transport door of the ship began to open.
Bright light seemed to have almost blinded us.
Outside I could see the ocean, but it was not the ocean that I was used to seeing. The one in New York was quite dirty and polluted nowadays but this ocean, in wherever we were, was as clean and blue as the sky.
The transport door was on the right side of the whole ship, at the bottom. I could only partly see the ocean, but, then as we were exiting the ship I could see sand, palm trees and a forest.
The weather had turned into a cloudy, miserable mood. It was very humid, but at least the sun was no longer present to roast us again.
The lorries drove out of the ship and onto a small port that we were meant to be parked.
After parking, the back door of the lorry opened and we were forced to leave.
Some children were too weak or hungry to even get up, but seeing that they weren't moving, the men stepped inside furiously and dragged them out by the hair.
We were led into the jungle in one long, single-filed line. The jungle hid all sorts of spectacular creatures: monkeys; sloths and gorillas even, but after about half an hour of tough treading we came to a long road, so we didn't get to see many animals.
The men made us follow them across the wide road, where there seemed to be a training camp.
It started with a small building, crooked, old and dirty, then followed by numerous backyards of sand, where the training seemed to be. There were many other buildings where I observed that men like our kidnappers were, playing with cards, smoking, drinking and gambling.
Finally, we were led into a huge training pitch: an area full of sand.
'Sit down!' one of the biggest men commanded in English.
All of us sat on the scalding sand with relief. Our legs were too tired to do anything else, even if the sand burned our thighs to the point of inflammation, we just didn't care.
'You orphans are here in Port-de-Paix,' a huge, surly man started to explain in his hoarse, French accent.
We all looked confused. Where was... what he just said?
'Haiti!' he shouted.
Oh, thats where all these men came from.
'You are in a training camp at the moment, we need more soldiers to fight against our enemies. You will live here for the rest of your lives, training and learning how to survive. For the next six months, you will all be taught how to speak our language, and in a month it will be forbidden to speak in English. If you don't listen to what we say, well, who could be so stupid?' he sniggered, 'we'll chop you up. With this: an assistant gave him a long, rasor-sharp knife, so long it nearly seemed like a sword.
Orphans began panicking. All trembled in fear at the omnipotent person who was explaining.
I, too, was shaking in fear, but I tried to remain calm. They like it when they see you scared and fearful, and if you are they scare you even more.
There were about 250 of us orphans, and we were supposed to be taken into groups of fifty, so there were in total 5 groups.
I was in a group of many orphans whom I did not know. We were taken into a large room with tables and chairs. At the front of the room was a huge white-board, with phrases and words written entirely in French.
Our teacher was a small, thin, black-skinned man with beady eyes. He looked to be in his late-forties, and was bald.
We were ordered to sit down, in French.
The whole lesson must of lasted for two hours, and the teacher spoke entirely in his native tongue, so it was difficult for any of us to understand.
I understood most of it, but at certain points he would speak too fast for me, so it wasn't all that easy.
My classmates learned the numbers relatively quickly, and the fact that the man would throw his white-board cleaner, made of wood, at us at any time for speaking, we were forced to concentrate and learn as much as possible.
At night time we were given fish-skin to eat on our dirty tables in the main canteen. No plates, just a hard wooden table with worn-out paint.
To sleep, we had no cushions, no sheets nor blankets to lie in. Every morning we were woken up at five a.m, studying Haiti's main language and eventually starting to do combat training.
The little children of ages 5-9 were obviously given easier work to do, well slightly.
With large sticks a pair of two children were forced to hit each other and blocking their hits.
Every pair cried in pain and anguish, and soon there was a pair of twins who were called up and obliged to hit the other.
One of them cried in despair, begging to do something else.
Our teacher threatened them with the long, terrible knife that they had shown the day before. The twin still refused.
The trainer grabbed the little boy's right arm, and held the knife close to it.
The boy screamed in fear, crying out for help.
'Do as I say!' the trainer commanded angrily.
Eventually the boy did pick up the stick again, and waited for his twin sister to start.
She thumped him on the arm a little, and he retaliated by hitting her back on the neck.
'You are meant to block each other's hits!' the trainer said in French.
I translated it into English for them, even if that risked me being punished.
'SHUT UP!' the trainer shouted at me.
I showed no fear. Like my mother, I wasn't afraid. Just to think about her brought tears to my eyes, but also gave me the strength to know that she was watching me wherever she was.
The twins blocked each others blows, and thankfully the trainer got fed up and let them sit back down.
Soon it was my turn, and I was paired up with one of the older children, whose name was Nick.
He was about twelve years old, and seemed happy to fight rather than refuse.
I showed the same expression just to prove that I wasn't a weakling. Not inferior.
I picked up my stick, and held it in a firm position by my left shoulder.
I am ambidextrous, but I preferred to hold the stick tighter with my left hand.
Nick also lifted his stick that lay by his feet, and prepared it in a good position, ready to thump and block.
The trainer counted from three to one in French, and on one we already started hitting each other.
Nick came closer and thumped me on the right shoulder.
I nearly blocked it, but then I hit him back on the side of his ribs.
He held his side in pain, but then furiously lashed out at me and hit smacked my face with a strong, steady blow.
I stepped back, holding my face in my trembling hands. I looked at the trainer, standing near to us in a senseless expression, because he knew that it was against the rules to hurt the other person on the face or head.
I suddenly jumped forwards while Nick sniggered happily, and I used all my might to bash the heartless orphan on the right arm; the one he used to hit with.
He screamed in anguish. I didn't smile because I felt bad that I had hit him, but this is how the world works these days; hit the other before he hits you.
Nick found that he could no longer use his right arm. He dropped the stick. I had won.
'Well done, you two,' the trainer said, 'both of you are very strong.'
'What's...he..saying?' asked Nick in a stuck voice, clutching his right arm.
I explained, then as we sat down I apologized to him. He ignored me and I didn't care. At least I tried.
And the days continued like so, French lessons, combat training then an afternoon meal of either fish skin or, if we were lucky enough, mangos. We never really got to play with the others. Once a week for about fifteen minutes there would be a small recreation in the biggest yard with all the children from both the orphanages, where I saw Jonathan and all my other friends. They never looked me in the eye. They must have been shocked and overwhelmed by the complete change in their lives, and I felt sorry for them. Even little Jonathan ignored me, but always looked sad and dreary, with huge, purple bags under his eyes.
One day, during a French lesson of about three hours, we were all interrogated.
The bald trainer, who we discovered his name was Janjak, spent five minutes
for each of us asking questions in French, and we'd have to respond.
For every wrong answer, we would be slapped on the face by his hand.
A five year old boy had to go up to Janjak's desk, and almost got everything wrong.
From the numbers 1-30, the boy could only remember 10, therefore he was slapped rather hard on the left cheek.
The trainer also asked certain phrases for the little boy to answer to, like, 'What is your name?' and, 'How are you?'.
The poor orphan couldn't remember much, and after the many slaps he received, to which he cried his eyes out to, was marked on a register out of ten. He was given 2, which is very bad. If the orphan kept getting bad marks on every interrogation, he would eventually be severely punished, which we learnt was being locked in a squalid cabin for a whole night, with not a bed to sleep in and away from all the rest, known as: solitary confinement.
Many others also got low marks, but no one as poor as his.
Plenty of slaps and smacks for almost everyone, except when it was my turn.
He would, like the combat training, just call up any person randomly.
'You,' Janjak called.
I walked up to the desk from the second-front row that I was sitting in. My table was disgusting and dirty, and I felt relieved that for at least five minutes I could be away from it.
'So,' he began in French, 'how are you?'.
I answered with a simple, 'fine thanks'.
Janjak then asked what was my name, and I said the whole phrase of 'my name is...' back.
He pretended to look annoyed, though I knew inside that he was rather impressed.
He then asked me to recite the entire French alphabet, followed by the numbers 1-30 and to respond to many other questions.
With not one question wrong, he finally asked me the most difficult question out of all the ones he's asked the others: 'Do you think that I am a good teacher?'. And, he said it far too quickly for me to understand all of the phrase.
Other children looked worried at the fact that they didn't know what to say if they were to be asked the same thing, so they listened carefully to what I was about to answer with.
I thought about the question carefully, trying to understand exactly what he'd asked.
'I think,' I responded at last, ' that you are one of the best teachers AND trainers that I've ever had.'
On that he sent me back, the only one out of everyone else who'd come before and after me without being slapped.
Others eyed me jealously, thinking I was on the trainers' side. The stress of changing everything had not only led to tears, but to paranoia as well.
The next day, I was woken up slightly earlier than everyone else in the canteen.
Janjak had crept into the spacious hall, shaking me slightly and whispering:
'Follow me, Zander. You did very well in the interrogation yesterday. I have a surprise for you.'
I didn't know what was happening, but I could tell that it must have been something good.
I got up, stretched a little and followed my trainer out of the canteen and into the daylight.