The hospital and surrounding homes were in southern and highest part of town so that area escaped the worst of the flooding. People lower down in the main part of town lost everything including several lives. Since this was a recurring problem, Bill went to the town leaders with a plan to prevent the worst of the flooding. I forget the details but the plan would require the efforts of the towns’ people. When asked how much they would be paid, he said there was no money for the work but their efforts would protect them from the floods. The leaders’ response was that the workers would say that they are not Henri Cristophe’s slaves and they do not would without pay.
When the slaves threw out their former masters they worried that the French army would come and retake the country so they built fortifications around the ports. General Cristophe constructed the Citadele, a massive fort with 365 canons on a mountain overlooking Cap Haitian and a palace below modeled after one in Europe. The Citadele is still one of the wonders of the modern world but today Henri Cristope is notorious in Haiti for enslaving thousands of his own people to do the work. Several times when I asked hospital staff to do something they wouldn’t ordinarily do, I was told, “You’re not Henri Cristophe and I’m not a slave.” Although the Haitian peasants claim they are free, they are slaves to a system that holds them to one of the lowest annual incomes in the world and at a level from which most cannot rise.