Haiti, One Year Later

One year after the earthquake in Haiti, one million people there are still living in tents.  Starvation and social upheaval have been avoided to date as the Haitian people seem to be concentrating their efforts on working their way out of the mess they find themselves in.  They apparently are getting enough to eat, though from what I have seen on the television I would not recommend the cuisine.

The Red Cross is at present building 300 semi-permanent wooden houses while a plan to give $130 to everyone living in the tent cities was rejected by the Haitian government, saying the move would cause the area to be swamped with others wanting the handout.

There is progress being made, but real construction in the form of water and sewage treatment facilities are hard to find.  Sixty-four vehicles donated by the United States for humanitarian aid are sitting unused because a tariff tax on imports has not been paid; which leads to the question.  Is all aid to Haiti being taxed by the Haitian government?

Some Haitians have been privileged in that they have been allowed to attend a five week training course, after which they are rewarded with a job working in a factory where they can earn a staggering $3.00 per day.

I guess the Haitians have the same problem with a government that is helping them to death as most other third world countries do.  We all should look on the bright side, at least they are not starving and international aid workers seem to have brought the cholera epidemic under control.

I think we should all take a good look at what our lives are and what they could be.  We are truly blessed in the United States but we need to realize that blessing is not an accident.  If the international elitists had their way they would take every last one of our resources, cash them out, and we would be left in the same deplorable situation that the Haitian people now find themselves in.

The fruits of our planet are abundant and the fact that any child, anywhere in the world goes hungry for a single day is an insult to the idea of humanity.  We may one day find it in ourselves to truly want to understand the sufferings of the people in the third world.  But the fact is we as human beings just have not developed that far yet.  So those of us who see suffering in the world as being the needless circumstance it truly is can only shake our heads and say, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”

God bless the Haitian people.