Though nothing really surprises me, I never ceased to be amazed by people sometimes. I'll readily admit...I don't read or watch the news at all really. There's never really much good on there quite honestly and I have my doubts about the unbiased nature of much of what is on there.
All this to say I don't know that much about what is going on in Haiti with the earthquake. Most of what I do know comes from reading people's facebook posts and going to a "Haiti Fundraiser" last night. Yep, I contributed my donation to Yele via text msg and contributed again to the relief effort last night. I think relief efforts are great and obviously much needed right about now in Haiti.
These 2 things, however, continue to amaze me about the situation in Haiti:
1) People who say things like "Haiti didn't deserve this." I assume they are referencing the fact that Haiti is basically a destitute "3rd world country" (is that still the term we use for poor countries nowadays?!) with limited infrastructure and a poor health care system. I can't quibble with that...I haven't run the numbers, but I'm sure by any estimation Haiti is poor. But "deserve"?? Thats a strong cup of tea right there. I can't really name any countries who "deserve" to have an earthquake ravage their country and people (maybe short of Nazi Germany and even they had a lot of good, solid people as evidenced by countless movies and stories centering around sympathizers, so they probably wouldn't even make the "deserve" cut.) Earthquakes (like their distant cousins hurricanes, tsunamis, etc.) are natural disasters. No country deserves to have its people die from natural disasters. Lets all agree that "deserved" is probably not the right word to use when referencing Haiti or the killing of innocent people by natural disaster anywhere, irregardless (yes, I know it is not a word but I use a lot of made up words!) of the country's economic status.
2) At last count the Haiti earthquake related death toll was over 70,000 people. That's a ridiculous amount of people. But what's even more ridiculous is society/media playing the whole "shock" and "owe the horror, people are dying in Haiti" card. Clearly, people have been dying by the tens of thousands in Haiti for decades now. Where was all this shock, horror, and grass root effort to save the country??
For example, in 2004 alone 24,000 haitians died of HIV/AIDs. Thousands of children every year are orphaned in Haiti by the epidemic. Approximately 120,000 haitians are living with AIDS today. Unless docs find a cure soon (preferably a free or cheap one!), they're probably not gonna make it either...Don't even get me started on statistics for all the other poverty related type deaths in Haiti(but think thousands of babies dying every year from innocuous things like diarrhea). The point is Haiti has been poor for years now and lots of people have been dying...
Suffice it to say that this is not new information to anyone...indeed, I particularly enjoyed this 2007 Report prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service basically screaming for help for Haiti. http://www.haitipolicy.org/images/haiti-crs-report.pdf
It says things like we should start a USAID program to "improve emergency preparedness and disaster mitigation" in Haiti. It also has lots of interesting charts demonstrating things like Haiti has roughly the same population as NY and has a landmass that is 40 times the size of NY, but yet has 4 times less police than NY.
Not shockingly, you will never see reports like these amongst all the media hysteria, in the papers or magazines, on the news, or at fundraisers. Just like it took Hurricane Katrina for America to come to the shocking revalation that a lot of brown people living in America are disturbingly destitute, apparently it takes a devastating earthquake for the world to come to the same conclusion about Haiti. Cuz you know tens of thousands of people dying every year of wholly preventable things (like AIDS, diarrhea, murder, etc.) is not quite newsworthy enough to stir up any outrage or sympahty. Nope, what we should really get all riled up about and launch grassroots save the world campaigns for is all these pesky natural disasters that we have no control over whatsoever.
Anywho, if a natural disaster is what it takes to shed light on all of the real underlying problems going on in Haiti (i.e., rampant poverty) then so be it. And while I'll remain amazed by all the earthquake hoopla (seeing as I'm almost positive there are no plans in place to move the country of Haiti off the fault line anytime soon...)lets just hope that unlike Katrina, this earthquake acutally brings some real and lasting impact and help to the people of Haiti.
While I'm done trying to figure out why one lives and another dies in this crazy, crazy world, "God don't make no mistakes."
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i think haiti and the dominican republic should have a war (or possibly a televised academic decathalon) to decide who gets the island once and for all.
ReplyDeleteSince it was an implicit question in your post, the politically correct equivalent for "Third World Country" in the 21st century is "developing country."
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. It was a refreshingly clear, articulate, and unique point of view. I'm glad you donated though, and didn't take the "Why care or even try" position. :)