ENTREPRENEUR LIFE

MR CLAUDE BASTIEN ACHIEVES THE AMERICAN DREAM

Few Haitians have been so successful as M. Claude Bastien  has been, in NY, the so-called big apple.

We know a few about his beginnings. But, by the turning eighties, in Brooklyn, the city where Haitians had settled, as in their country, every body had been dreaming of going overseas, M. Claude Bastien, now a man in his seventies, earned a 7-jewerly store located mainly at Utica, Nostrand and Flatbush, the most busy BRKLYN areas. Back home, Haitians  would have to become eager  to show off  and probe how beautiful  their lives had changed.

M. Bastien didn’t go that way.

Even though times went bad, namely after the 1970 blackout which made thefts breaking most of his business with a loss of almost  500.000 dollars, M. Bastien didn’t get  angry. Not even when one morning he lost by neglect 55.000 dollars after a purchase deal of 100 watches.  His optimism had not faded away. “It was a very bad experience”, he said without any change in the voice tone. He had made it after all. With a 11- personal member paid every week, going back and forth along the bustling   Brooklyn,  M. Bastien could not complain too much. He had achieved his  American goals and continue to live by American standards. Once, in the past, by the early sixties, he had been making a living from the scratch: selling  clothes, cleaning floors and working as a handy man. Now he was the boss and a big one.  What does that  mean watching bad guys looting businesses in the dark? M. Bastien, a born optimist, went over those hardships and continued to plan for the future.

At his spare time, M. Bastien knew how to spend his money. Few Haitian entrepreneurs had  seen the world as he did. There is no continent but Africa where he had no paid a visit. Coming to  the US for the first time  through Canada, M. Bastien had never stopped traveling. “Russian subway is impressive, he said, while mentioning how carefully the Lenine grave was  revered.  Jumping to South America, he said to have climbed over the Aztec  plateaus to watch those  pre-Columbian ruins still imposing. He knew Roma and St Peter square where doves  seem to fight happily.  But, according the way he remembers his travelling, Europe seems to have been his main rendezvous. M. Bastien has always been cruising along the Greek islands, tired to sip coffee in Paris or under the Londonian fog. He used to like Holland, its flowers and its dairy products, let alone Argentina tango.