BOSTON BEACH, Portland — Eight children, including two babies, were among 37 Haitians who came ashore at Boston Beach in Portland sometime after one o’clock Monday afternoon.

The three girls, five boys, five women and 24 men arrived in a canoe roughly 18 feet long.

The small boat had a sail, one paddle and two life jackets. Packed among its human cargo were what appeared to be work tools. They said they had been travelling for 14 days.

Javian Brown told the Jamaica Observer he was surfing on the beach when he saw them.

“I guided them in on the beach. One of the guys said they were on the sea for three days. They were weak, smelly and tired with no drinking water in the boat. We got water and some Coca-Cola and gave to them, along with some sandwiches,” he said.

The police and health officials soon arrived and took charge of the scene. By late afternoon the group of arrivals had been taken to a health facility.

“There will be a multi-sector approach in dealing with the Haitians as they will be screened and checked,” said Superintendent of Police Lloyd Darby who is in charge of the Portland Division.

He cautioned against publishing photos of the men in case any of them are wanted for breaking the law. Based on comments they made on the beach, two of the Haitians who landed Monday appeared to have been in Jamaica before.

Residents were happy the Haitians did not arrive a day earlier, when the parish hosted the Trang Back Boston Jerk Celebrations.

“They would have disappeared in the crowd. Some of them behave like Jamaicans,” one man said.

The Haitians did not give a reason for fleeing their country but long-running civil unrest has made life challenging there. In May, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres described Haiti as a “tragic situation”, noting that a number of people have been killed, several are unable to live their lives and that the country also faces dramatic food insecurity.

The UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) said in the month of April alone more than 600 people were killed in violence in the country’s capital. This follows the killing of at least 846 people in the first three months of 2023.

BINUH said that overall the number of victims of killings, injuries and kidnappings increased by 28 per cent in the first quarter of the year, with a total of 1,634 cases reported.

In its advisory urging its citizens to “consider departing Haiti now”, the United States said that protests, demonstrations, tyre burning, and roadblocks are frequent, unpredictable, and can turn violent and that the “US Government is extremely limited in its ability to provide emergency services to US citizens in Haiti”.