Remembering Haiti

Every building in the capital of Port-au-Prince has been damaged. Every hospital has been destroyed. Every school, house, car, street, makeshift home, orphanage, church and shantytown; even the capital’s main prison and presidential palace are ruined by Tuesday’s massive earthquake. What makes this tragedy “cruel and incomprehensible” as President Obama expressed, is that it happened in a country where living or existing was already a daily struggle. Haiti is a country where 80% of the population lived in poverty on a good day. Clean drinking water was a dream and malnutrition was widespread.

In 2000, I had a chance to visit Port-au-Prince, Haiti as part of my graduate studies. I was sent there to compare and contrast three different systems of government: Cuba (as a dictatorship), Haiti (as an emerging democracy) and the United States. At the time, I went with the idea that living in Haiti was possible. All it needed was leadership and organization. But once I traveled around the capital, I quickly learned the country’s infrastructure was fundamentally broken and there wasn’t much of a government in place to sustain its nine million inhabitants.

Realizing for the first time that perhaps living in Haiti was not possible, it was difficult to focus my attention on its smallest citizens, the Haitian children. They were everywhere, wondering the streets. Their silent cries, broken smiles, and tiny frail bodies and small hands reached out to me and other tourists for help. Among their abandoned and confused stares, I remember a little girl named Lala. She was found near her mother’s decomposed body and taken to an orphanage in the small village of Fondwa.

Now, during the aftermath of such a horrific earthquake, I see Lala’s deep sadness and think of how her and many of the children have already endured such a devastating lifestyle: the city exudes an overwhelming stench making it difficult for tourists and natives alike to breath. The beautiful mountains and beaches are covered in street trash, broken cars, animals, the sick, and even worse, the mosquitoes that hover over the sick, waiting to lick their wounds when they pass on.

My classmates and I couldn’t possibly compare three countries when all we could see was shocking contrast. You can die of measles and diarrhea? Why wouldn’t it be treated before reaching serious infection? As we continued our tour through the city, we asked ourselves many more of these questions and wondered if we had accidentally arrived to hell on earth.

Perhaps Sometimes We End Up In These Places By Accident...

As I watch the rescue efforts today and stomach-turning pictures making front-page news around the world, I recall my images and wonder if the children I met almost ten years ago survived, especially the children I saw playing soccer with a rock or the few fortunate ones in school. Did they survive or did they perish too?

And how will the rest of the world really act a month from now when the rebuilding process begins? Will we roll up our sleeves and help or will we turn the other way and write Haiti off as the poorest nation in the world?

Please, if you can’t roll up your sleeves, consider donating to the relief effort at the World Food Program or Red Cross