Haiti has a rich store of proverbs. Yvonne McCalla Sobers collected the proverbs below to try and keep hope alive in the aftermath of the January 2010 devastating earthquake in Port-an-Prince, Haiti.
- You know what you’ve got, but you don’t know what’s coming. (-Haiti)
- Misfortune has no horn. (-Haiti)
- Where there is hunger, goats do not die tied to their ropes. (-Haiti)
- The rock in the water does not know the pain of the rock in the sun. (-Haiti)
- What happens to the turkey can happen to the rooster too. (-Haiti)
- The giver of the blow forgets, the bearer of the scar remembers. (-Haiti)
- Every human being is a human being. (-Haiti)
- Only the knife knows what is at the heart of the yam. (-Haiti)
- Beyond the mountain is another mountain. (-Haiti)
- A stumble is not a fall. (-Haiti)
- Hope makes one live. (-Haiti)
For more Haitian proverbs (and proverbs from many places) please see Lifelines: The African Book of Proverbs.