A portrait of Haiti

La Prensa de San Antonio.- 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 the massive earthquake that struck recently.

What makes this tragedy “cruel and incomprehensible” as President Obama expressed, is that it happened in a country where living or existing is a daily struggle. Haiti is a country where 80% of the population lives in poverty. Clean drinking water is hard to come by on a normal day and malnutrition is 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, wandering the streets. Their silent cries, broken smiles, 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.

During this difficult time for Haitians, after such a horrific earthquake, I see Lala’s deep sadness. I think of how she- and many of the children, 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 glass old cars and animals, even worse mosquitoes and flies torment the sick and dying.

My classmates and I couldn’t possibly compare three countries when all we could see was shocking contrast. We all were surprised to learn measles and diarrhea could be fatal. Haitians were dying of simple very curable diseases. 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 how a people could live and survive in such poverty and deplorable conditions.

Lessons learned

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 that were actually attending school. Did they survive or did they perish like so many others?

And how will the rest of the world 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 consider donating to relief efforts at https://www.wfp.org/donate/haiti or Red Cross http://newsroom.redcross.org/category/haiti-earthquake-Jan-2010/

You can read more from Araceli at “Gal about the Globe”...http://galabouttheglobe.blogspot.com/