Wyclef Jean
The singer on his Haitian childhood and suburban dadhood.
by Tammy La Gorce
July 16, 2008
When thirty-five-year-old Wyclef Jean is not on some awards-show stage strutting around the volcanic hip shakes of Shakira, he's making or producing music with luminaries of all stripes: Carnival Vol. II (Sony), released earlier this year, has tracks with artists as varied as Norah Jones, T.I., Paul Simon and Sizzla. The papa of Caribbean-spiced political hip-hop has a life outside his music, though, and it involves being an actual papa — not just to his adopted three-year-old daughter, Angelina, but to millions of kids from his native Haiti who look up to him. (Wyclef is something like a funky Santa Claus in his homeland.) Babble talked to Clef about his campaign to get Haiti's kids educated, vaccinated — and heard. — Tammy La Gorce
In a PSA for a Haitian vaccination campaign organized by the Pan American Health Organization in May —the farthest-reaching in Haiti 's history, with more than five million children set to be vaccinated — you say, "To vaccinate a child is an act of love." In the U.S., vaccination is controversial: some parents are opposed because of religious reasons, or because of potential adverse effects, or because they think it violates individual liberty. What do you say to these parents?
It's not my place to tell a parent what's best. They have to make decisions based on their beliefs and life situations. The environment and accessibility to disease is not the same in all parts of the world — there are serious tropical diseases and malaria in Haiti that are not a part of the health concerns in the United States. I couldn't apply what's good for a child in Haiti to a child in the U.S.
You established the Yele Haiti Foundation, which provides scholarships to Haitian children, in 2004, and it's grown each year. You've already sent 30,000 children to what Haiti calls intermediate school — middle school in the U.S. — and your goal is to send up to 10,000 more each year. What was your early education in Haiti like, before you moved to Brooklyn as a nine-year-old?
Yeah, as far as Yele Haiti, economies are struggling now, and it's more difficult each year to raise money.
"My early school years were much like what you see in third-world countries: I rode a donkey to school or walked."
But we're committed. My early school years were much like what you see in third-world countries: I rode a donkey to school or walked. It was about five miles away. We had a uniform, which was my best outfit. My aunt and uncle took care of me because my parents had immigrated to the United States, and my aunt made sure that uniform was pressed and clean. My classroom was one room with around twenty kids.
What does Yele Haiti mean? Did you choose the name?
Yele means "cry freedom." I made it up.
Does Yele Haiti help kids in Haiti beyond scholarships?
We have a lot of programs for the arts, athletics and community involvement — we're in the process of building a recording studio in Cité Soleil, which is one of the most dangerous slums in the world. The idea is to give kids something to be responsible for, somewhere to express themselves. We have football and basketball programs that also help with kids' development. And we have a program called Hip Hop Sante which teaches about AIDS prevention through hip-hop lyric contests.
©2008 Tammy La Gorce and Babble
About the Author
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Tammy La Gorce is a freelance entertainment writer living in New Jersey with her son and daughter. Her work regularly appears in The New York Times, GRAMMY and other magazines. |
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