Haitixchange.com isn’t going to be like most companies that come to Haiti. He plans to put money back into the country instead of trying to exploit it. When Neil introduced Pascal to a painter named Sanon, Pascal found the feature of his Web Site. Sanon’s work is exquisite and well known. Despite the country being impoverished, Haitian art is generally lively, and colorful.

“It really shows what Haitians think of their country,” Pascal says happily. “One of the most important things I realize over there, as poor as Haiti is, they’re not feeling sorry for themselves! Things are happening! It’s not quiet at all!”

Pascal went to the Haitian Center of Art, where paintings were stacked up because there is no tourists to buy the work. This was an example of the untapped potential that Pascal realized was there. No other Caribbean country is as well known for his art as Haiti is. So Pascal decided to show the art, complete with background of the art and the artist -- why he or she painted the work and what it means. All of this is in an attempt to not only make a web surfer want to buy the work, but want him want to explore Haiti via his site.

“I want to draw you into it, to make you want to buy it. I don’t want, picture, price, and put it in your shopping cart. That’s not what I want to do. I want to share Haiti with the world.”

He has a big head start in Neil, his business savvy friend who does Internet purchasing in Haiti. “Neil is going to handle fulfillment. He going handle talking to the artists on a daily basis, shipping work over here, he’s going to handle all of that stuff.”

Pascal went to Haiti in December of last year, traveling to the other side of the country with better-paved roads called Le Keyes. Former President Aristide was raised there. Then he went a third time earlier this year, shocking his family and prompting his boss to ask him if he was moving there for good. Pascal told him no ? not yet anyway.

That’s too far down the road, moving to Haiti. For right now, Pascal and Neil are going through the details of haitixchange.com -- should they use Federal Express or UPS? They have a lot of things to clear before their self-imposed time to put up the site -- May 18th Haitian Flag Day. He doesn’t expect a return on haitixchange.com yet so there will be no e-commerce on the site until later. But he does expect to continue making trips down to Haiti, ironing things out and getting better aquatinted with the country he always wanted to visit but just never could.

Pascal is happy, even if he has a world of work to do. He always wanted to go to Haiti and now he’s done it more times than he could ever dream of. In the process, he found something to believe in -- better than anything he could have imagined. He finally got to see the country where his family grew up. Now Pascal’s family is getting used to him traveling down there and they are even picking his brain for information on his and their country.

“Now I speak Creole better and my father and I listen to Haitian songs, instead of me listening to Hip-Hop and him just dealing with it.”

Now Pascal and his father Bossuet share a bond they never had before and their conversations, though always normal, have reached a whole new level of intimacy since Pascal made it a point to visit his adopted home. “I’ve probably seen more of Haiti than most Haitians,” he says of his three trips.

So it looks like he found it ? that thing he’s been searching for. Haiti was formed 158 years before he was born. The tradition and the history are enough to intrigue anyone. Pascal’s parents were raised there, members of his family were raised there and he himself was found there.

“On my first trip, everybody asked me, ‘what the heck are you going to Haiti for?’ Then I went again, and then again. Now my aunt who lives in France, who said she washed her hands on Haiti and didn’t want to have anything to do with it, now she’s asking me how to go.”