Fear Factor in Haiti

99.9 percent of the Haitians are superstitious. I was surprised to be listening to a famous journalist in Haiti yesterday who thinks it is normal for people to die during the carnival season because, superstitiously speaking, it has to happen. SAY WHAT???

Other countries talk about public safety all the time. Whenever there is a large crowd gathered for some kind of event, public safety, making SURE everyone is safe, is the number one priority for the authorities in other countries except Haiti.

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Imagine that... A baby is crying all day and all night, she is not eating, she just keeps on crying. The family refuses to take her to a hospital. Instead, they think it's some poor lougarou neighbor trying to suck the blood of the baby.

En Francais: En Haiti, les LOUGAROUs et le gouvernement sont blâmés pour tout ce qui fait peur!

A couple of weeks later, the baby is dead. "it is the LOUGAROU that came and ate the baby," the grand father came to me and said.

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Ever since I was 15 years growing up in Spring Valley, New York, I said to myself that I would like to move back to Haiti by the time I am forty years old.

Back in those days the 'Haitian fear factor' was called 'Zenglendos.' It has since changed...

Moving to Haiti - The Fear Factor

You know... There is always a 'fear factor' in Haiti, something keeping Haitians abroad from moving back to Haiti... Something that 99.9% of Haitians in diaspora say: "When this over, lè Haiti chanje, m-ap retounen."

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I asked a Haitian "boss mason" for an estimate on a construction job in Haiti, just an estimate, then I ask second one... He flat out refused to even give me an estimate simply because I asked another before him...

"That's how it is in Haiti, " someone says to me. "Once you talk a 'boss mason' about a job, worse, if you bring him to the 'chantier' (the construction site) nobody else will take the job unless you lie to him and tell him he is the first one."

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