Perils at Sea Fail to Deter Haitians Fleeing Poverty, Repression at Home : Exodus: Fear for their lives drives many to keep seeking a way out of their country. Some risk travel on rickety boats.

Roger Vallere took the first step of the long trip to Miami by climbing on the back of a young man for a piggyback ride through the waves to board the little sailing ship Venus Mon Amour 7 waiting five yards offshore.

The 35-foot wooden boat with its single mast and two heavily patched sails was the hope of Vallere and several others who set out Sunday for the imagined paradise of southern Florida--despite the real possibility of death and the probability that they would be returned by the U.S. Coast Guard.

For three hours Sunday morning, the men and women, including an aged, crippled woman in a wheelbarrow, lined up to pay their 20 cents for the piggyback ride to the ship. There they handed over another $12 for the initial leg of the journey to the port of Gonaives.

For Vallere, a 29-year-old political activist from the stinking slums of Port-au-Prince, the prospect of drowning was unimportant. “My life here is in danger,” he said as he stood on the sunbaked rocky beach. “I want to save my life. I’d rather risk dying at sea than be killed by the soldiers.”

Wearing only a blue tank top, cotton pants and cracked shoes, his only luggage a battered fake leather attache case, Vallere told of his life since the Haitian army overthrew the elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Sept. 30.

“Because I was in Lavalese”--a popular movement formed by Aristide to give the poor an organization to deal with the government--”the soldiers came to my house at night,” he said. “They shot at my house. When it got bad, I left. My wife and two children stayed behind because I hoped if I left, the soldiers would go away.

“My neighbors told me that after I left, that the soldiers came in the night and shot my children,” he said. “They are missing. My daughter was Marie Esther. She was 2 1/2. My son was Vanel. He was a baby. The neighbors said the soldiers told them they will kill me if I return.”

He told his story quietly, his voice barely audible over the bustle of the little beach, the sound of clicking dominoes being played under the rustling leaves of a fig tree and vendors selling yams, cabbages and bananas from the uncertain shade of tattered reed huts.

Ahead of Vallere in the line was Joseph Oreste, a 42-year-old man carrying a small, tattered athletic bag. “I go because I want to save my life,” he said. “I belong to Lavalese and that is why they want to kill me. They searched my house, they shot at my house, arrested members of my family.”

For 22 days, Oreste had been hiding in the mountains and sleeping in the sparse woods outside of his hometown, Petit Goave. What did he do to cause the army to raid his house and drive him to abandon his wife and four children and go into desperate hiding? He joined a Lavalese group called Solidarity, formed by the poor to take their concerns to the government.

“We aren’t violent and we had no arms,” Oreste said, pulling from a pocket a wrinkled piece of paper identifying him as a poll watcher at the December, 1989, election that swept Aristide into office. Ironically, he represented a group that Aristide had declined to work with once in office.

“If I’m lucky, I’ll find a boat in Gonaives, but I only have 10 gourdes (about $2) in my pocket,” said Oreste, whose little bag was almost as empty--two small loaves of bread, some underwear and a tube of toothpaste.

Venus Semilus, captain of the Venus Mon Amour, said that while not all his passengers these days are trying to escape to Miami, the number has increased considerably over the last two months. So have his profits.

“Before the coup, I hauled mostly cargo and a few familiar people” on a daily run between Point de Montrouis and Gonaives, he said. “Now I am taking many more people, and now I don’t know most of them.”

Sometimes, he added, “people don’t tell you exactly where they are going, but most of them are going to Miami. They have a system. They organize themselves here and go to Gonaives and build a boat or pay to get on another.”

Before they get that far, they pay Semilus. Where once he charged $6 for a handful of passengers, Sunday’s fare was double that for more than 50 people. There are days when he crams more than 100 people on board. “It’s not a big business,” he said, “but I make a living,” which explains why he stays in a Haiti so poor that vultures no longer find food in the huge garbage dumps that line the streets and roads.

Another explanation is found in the trip itself, a treacherous voyage through some of the region’s angriest waters, usually made on rafts made of green logs and coconut husks. “No,” said Semilus, a 15-year seagoing veteran, “I would not sail on them.”

Still, many do. Since Oct. 29, more than 4,500 Haitians have been picked up by the Coast Guard; almost 200, however, drowned in one accident last week.

The dangers and frustrations do not seem to deter those fleeing Haiti. Many of those lining up for the Venus Mon Amour had tried to get to Miami before.

One was a hard-of-hearing, unemployed teacher who gave only his first name, Saul, 32. “I made a trip in 1989 on a homemade sailboat,” he said. “We left on a Friday and three days later landed in Cuba when the mast of our boat broke and water came in.

“Eight days later,” he said, he and 187 others fled Cuba. “We got close enough to Miami to see airplanes taking off and landing. We were shouting, ‘Come and take us!’ to the planes.”

Instead, a Coast Guard cutter picked them up. “We told them we wanted to go to Miami. They told us they were returning us to Haiti,” Saul said.

“Why am I going again?” he asked. “I’m not doing anything. I don’t have a house. I can’t help my mother. I want to make a future.”

Another traveler, Solomon Waseneh, said he first sought to leave Haiti seven years ago when political violence swept the country. “I went because my life was at stake and I think my life is still at risk,” he said.

His initial escape got him as far as the sight of houses on the Cuban coast before he was picked up and returned to Haiti. “I love Aristide,” the 29-year-old farm worker said, “and if you care for Aristide now, you will have a problem with your life. I told them (the Coast Guard) before that I was leaving because of the political situation and because of economic misery.”

While there was no reason to doubt that all those leaving here Sunday were economically devastated--as well as fearful of the political violence and repression in Haiti--most clearly were aware that their only chance of staying in the United States, if they made it that far, would be to claim political refugee status.

“This time if I am caught,” said Waseneh, “I will tell them the only reason is because of the political situation.”

But that appears uncertain at best. Interviews with others caught and returned by the United States indicate that they are questioned only briefly and in such a way that an average, unlettered Haitian would not know how to explain his status. Only about 85 of the more than 4,500 Haitians picked up in the last month have been given political refugee status.

Still, they go. Somehow Oreste got enough money to pay his passage to Gonaives. As the Venus Mon Amour 7 raised its sails and headed into the sea, he, grabbed the mast, grinned back at the shore and waved. He and the others broke into a simple song in Creole.