#2308: recent attacks on foreign nationals-- Auguste comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:JRAuguste1@aol.com

Regarding the impasse Ninaclara mentioned in her post dated 1/21/2000 where a 
foreign woman was killed in the presence of her husband....

I also have traveled that "impasse" from Titanyen to Cite Soleil. That one 
lane road was built in not such a distant past to alleviate the traffic 
problem of La Plaine, Carrefour Bon Repos, Lillavoix areas when entering or 
leaving Port-au-Prince from and to the north of Haiti. I agree that the road 
is a dangerous area for anyone using it, specially at night. It has no light 
on it at all for night driving like all the national roads in Haiti, nothing 
new there, and it has been invaded by the usual street merchant crowd on both 
side of it. Not a telephone in sight to summon for assistance if need be and 
to make matter worse it ends up abruptly on a dirt and narrow road that goes 
straight through Cite Soleil. It is bad enough to visit Cite Soleil in the 
day time, never mind at night. When I inquired as to why does the road stop 
at Cite Soleil in an unfinished state, I was told that the road could not be 
completed because to do so many of the illegally built on public land houses 
in Cite Soleil would have to be destroyed to make way for the road and the 
occupants of those "houses" are Aristide's people and so are untouchable. 

I also noticed that the Cite Soleil crowd that hangs out next to the road 
does not appear to be pleased seeing one driving there in a nice vehicle. It 
looks at you as if you were driving over their sacred land or that somehow 
their poverty is linked to the fact that you can drive what it is viewed as a 
nice vehicle while they are struggling.  

It is indicative of lots of things in Haiti when a road cannot be 
build/completed due to reverence to illegal squatters who build their abode 
on public land. 
And so the whole country is inconvenienced because of tolerance of 
illegality. 

Who is actually in charge there? Didn't the road planner foresee the problem 
of removing abodes from Cite Soleil to built the road for the common good of 
the country? 

That road is a shortcut allright, a shortcut straight to hell.