The next few entries will be about the Haitian earthquake tragedy, starting with this first post about “normal” conditions.
In 2003 my entire family of five went on a work camp trip to the Dominican Republic, which is on the same island as Haiti. We were in the suburbs called Los Alcarizzos to help rebuild a school. From that experience I can put the current conditions in Haiti in some context.
The city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic is much like an American city. There are affluent parts and run-down parts. The distinction between the two countries lies in that living conditions get worse outside of Santo Domingo, whereas in our country the suburbs generally have better living conditions. Los Alcarizzos features rutted streets of dirt with open sewage flowing through tiny gulleys. Farm animals roam streets lined with corrugated metal shacks. Power lines are in abundance, and almost every shack features a radio or even a TV, but the infrastructure for transportation, sanitation and health is very sparse.
In the rural hinterlands it can get worse still. We made a field trip to a Haitian village within the borders of the Dominican Republic. The reason a Haitian village formed there was because the economic “opportunity” of picking sugar cane was better there than what they could find across the border. The village had one rutted street with sewage as in the suburbs, but in addition to live animals there were also the skeletons of dead cattle that one had to be careful not to step on. Instead of corrugated shacks there were something like barracks where many different families were grouped together. Most people, to our knowledge, had only one set of tattered clothes which they wore. And this was their preferred option to being in their native Haiti.
I have never been within the actual borders of Haiti, but these experiences give me a sense of the conditions for the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Port-au-Prince was probably not a great place to live before the earthquake, but probably the best place to live within Haiti. Being destroyed by earthquake means, in essence, that Haiti is equally bad everywhere at this point.
I hope this encourages people to contribute to the rebuilding of Haiti. There may be some reservations about foreign aid in general or to Haiti in particular. Some types of reservations are justified. More on that next.
Tags: Cultural Harmony
