SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL

December 13, 2005

Agency helps farm worker provide for her large family

By Rhonda J. Miller
Staff Writer

South Bay -- The scent of good earth alternates with the smell of burning sugar cane along these miles and miles of land stretching to the horizon.

Near the fields of stalks, burned to get rid of leaves so the cane is easier to harvest, is where Iliana Genty works to feed seven children.

She drives away from her little yellow duplex in Belle Glade at 5:30 a.m. to a gas station nearby, where she meets the bus that takes her to work.

Genty has been able to keep up with the rent on that house, and expenses for her five children and two children of a cousin who died, with the help of the Farmworker Coordinating Council of Palm Beach County.

"She already has five kids of her own, and to take on more responsibility, when she doesn't have much money -- she's a person who cares about children," said Lois Monroe, a former celery packer who is office director for the Belle Glade branch of the Farmworker Council. "Her cousin's kids might have had to go to foster care if she didn't take them."

"The Farmworker Council helped me with some money for my bills," said Genty, who began working with the council and Monroe about five years ago.

The council paid Genty's $500-a-month rent twice in the past three years and helps pay an occasional electric bill.

"Lois is a good lady. She cares for people," Genty said. "She calls me every month to give me some food for my babies. I don't want to take the food, but sometimes I do."

Genty doesn't like to ask for help, said Jeanette Mendez, her case manager at the council. But when money runs out, she turns to the Farmworker Council because of the children.

The council has given the family gift certificates for school supplies and clothing for the children.

The council helped Genty get her work permit, and she has taxes taken out of her paychecks, which add up to about $10,000 a year. When there's no picking or planting, she gets about $500 a month in unemployment, for as long as it lasts.

"She's a hard worker," said Mendez, who keeps in touch with Genty through sugar cane season, then as she picks radishes and corn. In summer, like many farm workers, Genty packs up the children and goes to pick in Georgia to keep some money coming in.

On this clear morning, Genty rides the bus with other farm workers miles past the fields of Belle Glade, past the Okeelanta sugar mill, past the first flashing light that no longer flashes.

Then it's a right turn at the second flashing light that doesn't flash anymore, either, onto a paved road into the fields. An arrow-straight 10 miles later, after the pavement turns to gravel, then dirt, is where Genty is working today.

It's a good day because there's work. Rainy weather slowed work for a while, so the 33-year-old Haitian farm worker is glad to be back earning money.

The field is dotted with green tractors pulling flatbed wagons loaded with seed cane.

Farm workers stand on top of the piles of cane on the wagons, tossing down stalks to a few others, who chop them with a machete, then drop them on mounds of black earth.

"I used to cut the cane with the machete," Genty said, swinging her arm to show the motion she used. "You work all day, you're tired. You could cut off your toes.

"This year I got a better job -- tractor driver," Genty said. She earns $60 a day, working six days a week for a contractor for a sugar company.

Genty left Haiti when her first child was a year old.

"They were killing people," Genty said of life in her native country.

She came to America in a small boat. The Catholic Church helped her get to Belle Glade, where she could find work and a Haitian community.

Genty has five children -- Kerlange Fremont, 15; Christopher Falante, 11; Linsey Estinfort, 9; Chelsea Estinfort, 6; and Christina Estinfort, 3.

She filed for child support but doesn't get any, Mendez said.

"Most of the farm workers are Hispanic and Haitian, and they mostly feel that children come from God," Mendez said. "So if the children come, they are welcome."

When her cousin died a few months ago, Genty promised herself she would find a way to adopt her cousin's two children, Dienny Alexis, 9, and Christenson Linder, 8.

Farm worker groups help out by picking the children up at home for school and day care. Genty usually gets home late in the afternoon.

She was in a program to become a certified nursing assistant but stopped while there's steady work in the fields.

Under a bright blue South Florida sky, Genty seems comfortable amid hundreds of acres of sugar cane.

A gust of wind blows a cloud of dust from the rich, black soil, the muck that is the treasure of South Bay and Belle Glade.

"Muck storm," Monroe says. The sticky dust clings to clothes, arms and face, so thick that it comes off in charcoal splotches when a napkin is rubbed across the cheek.

"I still got a dirty job," Genty says, climbing into the cab of the bright green tractor.

But she's glad for the work, and it's better than the machete.