Marie Ange François, 56, clings to a photo.
Marie Ange François, 56, clings to a photo. It’s one of the few she was able to save from a flood, and she keeps it carefully in the place where she has taken refuge. Like hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Marie Ange was driven from her home in Pernier by the Vitelhomme gang.
In this slightly yellowed photo, kept like a treasure, you can see a sparkling smile. That of a young woman, slender, short, wearing a toga, cap, medal, and her graduation diploma from the Faculty of Applied Linguistics at the State University of Haiti proudly displayed. “That’s Slanda,” says Marie Ange François before diving into her memory, her recollections. “It’s not her only diploma. She also graduated from the Haitian Hotel School,” Marie Ange François adds, as she once again walks through the halls of hell.This woman, whose husband died in the January 12, 2010 earthquake without ever seeing their youngest child, who is in her last year of high school this year, is fighting the battle of her life. She says she needs voices, hands, help so she can hold her daughter, Slanda François, 31, who is stuck in prison on the other side of the world, in Russia. The young woman, who had gone to Russia to study, ran into immigration problems at the worst possible time, in the middle of a psychotic crisis. She ended up caught in the Russian prison system.
“Before her imprisonment, I felt she wasn’t doing well. She was smiling all the time,” confides Marie Ange, who is going through the worst ordeal today. “I haven’t heard from Slanda since November 2025. One of her friends hasn’t seen her since. At Cazo Pobo Prison #12, you need a lawyer to see her,” explains Marie Ange. “I don’t know how my daughter is doing, who is sick,” sighs Marie Ange. Her nightmare is well known, but so far, the efforts of Haitian diplomacy to help Slanda get out of prison and return to Haiti have been unsuccessful. “Please help me,” calls out Marie Ange.
