...remember 911....the feelings are back...or is it a "Story about Poverty"?

Posted by C.Worring

The feelings when 911 happened are back ----the quake in Haiti last week, is truly a reminder! So many innocent people gone, in a matter of minutes.  Similarities...yes.. it's a massacre!  Bodies everywhere, with no such system to identify all the bodies...  unexpected... definitely unexpected and lastly it happened in an overpopulated area where there are not just hundreds, but thousands of people!!!  Hear me out...thousands!!!!


As David Brooks, NY Times columnists, writes that this is a "Poverty Story".  We know about the 7.0 earthquake in San Francisco in 1989...and with this magnitude, only 63 people died!  In Haiti at the same magnitude...thousands died !!


So, is it okay to say that it had something to do with poor construction, and corrupt public services?  Poor infrastructure?  Or just plain ignorance that a quake this magnitude will not affect the country as it actually did...


I am not only a bit saddened but very worried!  I received a call from a friend who is a Haitian national that migrated to Montreal, today. Him and his wife just built a home in Haiti a year ago.  They both plan to move back because of the weather and the lower standard of living.  His family and friends are fine.  He told me that the hardest, is seeing the faces of the Haitians that are left alone in the streets, the young children left without parents, the elderly that can't get a bed to lay in to sleep....and it goes on.


He said, "Our home is fine, just a few cracks, but it is ok!"  So, doesn't this tell me that proper building materials ARE available!  I am not an architect nor a contractor, but I have renovated a home in the past...I know that there are substitutable materials to reduce costs for one...but a good contractor will tell you that it won't last! Or was it just luck that his home was not completely destroyed?


In the developing and developed countries, the slums and/or the poor are the ones that seem to suffer more! Affected... but safer are the upper class ..... But, what happened to the city of Port Au Prince??  Hotels, buildings, etc.. did not make it either? They are still finding bodies under the rubble, missing people, missionaries, tourists...etcc.  Should I continue to question the construction? 


So after the food, water, and the cleanup ...what next?  I assume it would be to rebuild Haiti right? 


David Brooks, also mentioned... "The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not."



So my friends, it is going to be a long battle in trying to aid this country.  As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized.


The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington mentioned that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is no doubt a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues without change.