Buses overloaded with people, chickens, pigs, and market produce often overturned on dangerous mountain roads causing injuries and deaths. I sometimes rode those buses. Then there were the ton-ton macoutes, the president’s militia who strutted around waving guns and using them on people who offended them. Papa Doc Duvalier promised a blood bath if rebels tried to overthrow him and his militia was his first line of defense.
During my first six months in Haiti there had been two invasions by rebels based across the border in the Dominican Republic. Both were repulsed by the army but in one I was close enough to her gunshots and in the other I, along with the Mennonite volunteers, had to leave their projects in Grande Riviere and go to Cap Haitian for two days while the army chased the rebels back to the DR.
Then there were the voodoo bocors, or shamans, with their poisons or potions to create zombies who were used as slaves. A bocor once told me he would turn me into a burro one night and that he would beat me and not feed me. A fate worse than death but he decided I was not worth it.