A Long Post Re Haiti

Some of the crew.

The hospital.

The tools we had.

The house we built.

Jeez, I’m starting to sound like a hero or something. No such thing. I just felt for those people and went to help. For me it was better to show up than to send money. I told Life & Hope Haiti (http://www.lifeandhopehaiti.org) I was a carpenter and could build shelters, and they said OK, come with us. But on the day before we left they said forget the shelters, we’re hauling rubble. So I unpacked my tools, then thought better of it and repacked a hammer, square, tape, tin snips. Good thing. When I got there they told me to build a house for six nurses who were sleeping on blankets in sorry tents and the rains were coming. Most in our group of 15 were working in medical clinics. No one had building experience, but four kids (one Haitian, a Jamaican, two gringos) and Susumu, the Japanese pastor said they’d help. They learned fast: measure, cut, nail. (It’s not hard; I once watched three Guatemalans build a classroom at Casa Guat on the Rio Dulce in one day with a saw and a hatchet.)

We scavenged lumber, nails, rusty steel roofing from piles of debris around the hospital compound. Miraculously, 15 sheets of ¾” plywood showed up one day. No one knew where they came from. This was one of several inexplicable events that transpired during the week. Whenever we hit a wall, a door mysteriously opened. The Methodists said it was God. It was quite amazing, these miracles; they happened so often you started to expect them.

Sorry, I don’t have many pictures. We were working all day and who wants to take pictures of people’s misfortune. Besides, I was only there a lousy week. Big deal. What can I say except “I went.” Now I’m home watching The Batchelor. It’s heartbreaking to see what’s happened down there; it’s as if 4 million people got nuked and survived—only to find their few material possessions were gone, not to mention their homes, schools, businesses, social cohesion, etc. Before the quake life in Haiti was about as bad as it gets, then out of the blue three or four hundred thousand souls disappear. A grim blow—but apparently they deserve it. According to Pat Robertson, Haiti’s notorious misery is the result of a deal they cut with the devil himself years ago, and who would know better than Pat? (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/13/crimesider/entry6092717.shtml)

Anyway, there’s plenty o’ work to be done down there, and will be for the next, oh, 20-30 years or so. If anyone wants to put together a work party and go down to see what can be done, let me know. It would require a large amount of money. I can probably organize it, but it would take a while to put it together. Enough. Gotta watch American Idol.

Haiti: poorest country in Western hemisphere

Life expectancy: 61

Literacy rate: 53%

Annual income: $560

80% of population lives below the poverty line

54% live in abject poverty

Infant mortality rate: 60 for every 1000 births (US=6/1000)

80 out of 1000 children die before the age of five

54% live on less than $1 a day

78% live on less than $2 a day

By the way, for $220 a year you can “adopt a child” at Life and Hope Haiti’s school in Milot, up north near Cap-Haïtien, far from the devastation:

http://www.lifeandhopehaiti.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44&Itemid=130