#1958: Re: #1945: Why is Investment in Haiti so Unattractive? Laleau comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:NLaleau@aol.com

Come on, Merrill -- you know why investment in Haiti is unattractive.  Trying 
to get ANYTHING done in Haiti is unattractive!  Even if you have your own 
car, the trip across town can still take over an hour, and if you are relying 
on public transportation, getting from Bois Verna to Delmas and back can take 
the better part of the entire day... I know it from experience.  If you have 
no phone, you're in bad shape.  If you do have one, you're not in much better 
shape.  Same thing with electricity... in other words, NO INFRASTRUCTURE.  
Try and get a car repaired??? I think by now everybody on the List has heard 
me recount the trials of getting even a Honda repaired -- SEVEN mechanics 
before it got fixed!!! (And I had the money to pay them, too, and plenty of 
people to refer me to their best mechanics... and friends in Miami to send me 
parts, and airplane tickets to go to Miami and get parts for my own and a 
half-dozen other people's vehicles, while I was at it... )  NOTHING WORKS IN 
HAITI except the gossip mills.  (And the peasants, of course, and plenty of 
other people who get paid next to nothing for their labor, not par semaine, 
or par mois, but "par fois," as they used to say in the days of Papa Doc...)

You know all this as well as I do -- so you must have asked the question to 
provoke discussion???

Sincerely,
Nancy Laleau