I was indeed in Haiti for about a week, late January/early February on behalf of my employer the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)- my role was to help document and bring voice to IFAW’s efforts for animals in Port-au-Prince. While I had worked in this capacity during our disaster efforts before, notably in Iowa during their floods two summers ago…as everyone knows, this response was vastly more dire for the human population on the ground…
Haiti has one hell of a history of getting the short end of the stick from the international community…here’s a good and brief background from Christiane Amanpour:
I’m no foreign policy expert, but if I were Haitian, I’m sure I’d have trouble mustering faith in my country’s ability to pull itself up by its own boot straps. I’d also be busting my hump to provide for my wife and kids…One of the most tangible thoughts running through my head during my week in Port-au-Prince was how amazingly lucky I and my family are…and how distressing it is to realize that w/all we have and our country has that we still have to hear the partisan crap spew out of politician’s mouths day in and day out…blah…
Haiti occupies about 1/3 of the island of Hispaniola:
Comparing the Haitian population’s per capita income (2008 estimates) to their neighbors, the Dominican Republic (DR), you see the DR doing something right, as a resident of the DR makes about $8,000 USD as the average Haitian who makes about $1300. My family and I spend roughly that amount each year on our Verizon bill…
One person I was speaking with, after I had spouted off about the dire state of the Haitian economy/recovery and how lucky I am/we are and such…(see above) said to me, “Ok, yah…but viscerally, what was the thing that struck you most…” and at the time, I think I pointed to a moment when we were driving through an intersection on the lower end of stretch of Delmas below the airport when the van slowed…and a crowd had formed around a semi w/trailer attached just to our left…turned out it was a food truck…and it was trying hard to pull away…and within about 30 seconds the entire crowd had swarmed the truck…literally climbing up on the back and sides while the driver was trying to move off…it turned out the truck had come to the wrong location to distribute its food.
I certainly remember thinking to myself…”Ok, you’re not on Cape Cod anymore Bouv…” and as the furious crowd pounded our van a bit and we continued on…you realize these people are frustrated by decades of inefficiency, by a huge lack of understanding with regard to their poverty level, by the insanity of western bureaucracy…and without much by way of recourse, on the ground it becomes Darwinian in the most basic sense in a Haitian hurry. (more…)
