From: Lance Durban <lpdurban@xxxxxxxxx>
Janice,
I am glad to hear that you are interested in Haiti and Haitians, but
things may not be quite as dire as you might assume from the negative
cynicism that seems to pervade this group. I can assure you that life
in Haiti does go on. Example: My two daughters, who both spent most
of the past 6 months in South Florida are back in Haiti and amazed by
the lack of interest or concern about coronavirus here. Granted, we
still see some use of face masks, but even that seems to be dwindling,
and that is because few people have actually seen much evidence of
Covid-19. At management meeting in our Haitian factory we took an
informal survey and half of the managers thought the pandemic was "fake
news", while the other half acknowledged that there must be some problem
given so much news about it globally, but even they felt that the danger
was vastly overblown in Haiti.
While there is crime in Haiti and it may be increasing, statistics are
scarce, so what one hears is a lot of scare-mongering. The U.S.
Embassy, now closed and on break, is part of the problem, but that is
because they have security people whose jobs depend on there being
horror stories to report back to Washington. Haitian-Americans,
including undoubtedly many on this list, are fed a heavy diet of horror
stories by relatives in Haiti, which can usually be counted on to
generate remittances.
This is not to deny either the many problems that exist in Haiti, nor
the poor job done by the present government. A measurement of the
latter is simply the very visible to failure to meet two minimum
functions of any government.... regular garbage removal from urban
locations and rudimentary pothole repair of the main thoroughfares.
In closing, I would note that there are still quite a few
Haitian-American visitors down this summer, in spite of high air fares
and the fact that there were no flights until early July. The major
hotels are open, although most have plenty of empty rooms, however
restaurants seem to be running normally. I'm sure list member, Jacqui
Labrom can give us more info on the tourist traffic that has been making
its way to Haiti recently.
Regards,
Lance Durban
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