We met Clivens when he was 10 years old. Our schooner Charlotte was anchored in Port Morgan on Ile a Vache, Haiti, when he and two other 10 year olds made their approach in a dugout canoe, one boy paddling with a palm branch, the other two bailing with calabash gourds.

They came alongside, grabbed our bulwarks and peered over the rail — big grins, bright eyes — laughing and talking excitedly in Creole. I passed them a line to secure their tippy hollowed-out log and invited them aboard.

Clivens, Joubert and Pah Boo joined us in the cockpit where we chatted in French, getting the low-down on customs regs (non-existent), availability of water and fuel (unavailable), and provisions, which they assured us was no problem. My wife Pam gave them a tour of Charlotte’s interior — the galley with a propane stove, hot and cold pressure water and refrigeration, the head with a porcelain toilet and sink, cabins with comfy bunks, a chart table with a map of their island, even a radio-telephone — amenities they had only seen in pictures. There are no cars, electricity or running water on Ile a Vache. Think donkeys and, of course, cows.

Back in the cockpit I made peanut butter sandwiches with the last of our Bermudian bread while Pam brought out sketchpads and colored pencils. Charlotte was the subject of choice.

When Pam mentioned our desire for mangoes, bananas and papayas, Clivens was quick with an offer to find those items at a fair price. I noticed him eyeing our 10-foot rowboat trailing astern and asked him if he wanted to use it to get our provisions. He gleefully responded, mais oui. As the boys climbed over the rail into the dugout, and Clivens into Charlotte’s tender, we passed them each a new toothbrush, tube of toothpaste and a bar of soap. They smiled and exclaimed, messi, messi blan — Creole for, thank you white people.

We set the awning and went about our chores while Clivens mastered the art of rowing — racing across the harbor, turning, backing, spinning and periodically beaching the boat to dash off to pick ripe fruit, which he delivered in the afternoon. This all happened in 2014.

We returned to Ile a Vache every winter for the next six years, cementing our friendship with the villagers of Kai Koq by helping with music and art programs, water quality, community gardens, etc. Watching those beguiling ten-year-olds grow into young men was hard — young lives laboring in the fields, carrying water, making charcoal, hauling and mending fishing nets. They had to pay to go to school and walk one-hour to get there. Opportunity was a distant dream.

In 2020, President Jovenel Moise was assassinated leaving a power vacuum that was filled by drug lords and murderers. The trickle of tourism ended and visiting yachts became even more rare. We have yet to return.

Clivens moved to Les Cayes, a small city on the south west coast of Haiti where he could continue his education but his money soon ran out. He returned to Ile a Vache and befriended a French sailor who was passing through. The Frenchman agreed to take him aboard and drop him off somewhere in the Americas.

After a stop in Cuba and then Jamaica, they sailed to Mexico, but the authorities would not let him off the boat. Then they sailed south to Nicaragua where Clivens was welcomed. He parted company with the Frenchman and headed north, hitch-hiking, riding buses and walking — hoping every step of the way that America would allow him in.

It took a month for this 18 year-old destitute Haitian migrant to arrive at the border and seek asylum in the United States. He filled out reams of paperwork and was told to wait for a call, along with 100,000 others who had been waiting, some for years. Two months later he was notified that he was accepted. He found his way to Providence, R.I., where a relative welcomed him into a thriving Haitian community.

Clivens joined us on the Vineyard for a weekend in early December of 2024. He brought us a bottle of wine and boxes of chocolates. Now 20 years old, 6’4”, lean and handsome, he still carries that innocent sense of wonder that captured us when he paddled out to Charlotte 10 years ago. He loves his job as an assistant nurse caring for the elderly and he earns enough to send funds to his mother on Ile a Vache, so she can rebuild her house that was destroyed in hurricane Matthew.

Clivens learned how to drive and he owns a car. He will be back on the Vineyard next summer to sail aboard Charlotte — and to take the dinghy for a row around the harbor.

Nat Benjamin is a co-owner of Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway. He lives in Vineyard Haven.