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.
