Haiti, a country of 11.2 million less than 700 air miles from Miami, has undergone nearly total meltdown in the past three or four months. This Reuters story is recent. None of the usual media are paying any attention.
I wouldn't have looked for this story if our parish didn't have a sister-relationship with a Haitian parish. Among other things, our youth group rounds up shoebox-sized Christmas packages for the kids in the Haitian school. More than 100 boxes are sitting in West Palm Beach now because there is no way to get them through the port of Haiti unstolen. Well, basically, the port is shut down. There is no gas, no money and no hope on the island. President Jovenel Moïse probably should resign, but he probably won't and whatever succeeds him will be no better.
(By the way, you should see the U.S. Embassy there. It is what the Taj Mahal would look like if the Taj had been built as a fort instead of a tomb.)
When asked why this came as news to parishioners here, one of our contact guys said, "You see stories every now and then. They are about three sentences long. They say, 'President Moïse says he will not step down. President Moïse is a friend of President Trump. President Trump is being impeached, but he says it is a 'witch hunt.' "
If half the reporters standing by to hear and repeat the president's daily complaints and insults were pulled off the prestigious but boring White House beat and assigned to cover the world outside our bubble, maybe we would know what's going on in Haiti
Maybe, too, there would have been coverage of the meeting between President Putin who is a friend of President Trump who is facing impeachment and President Zelensky, who is a friend of the Republicans in Congress who are defending President Trump from impeachment. The meeting was brokered by President Macron of France, who used to be a friend of President Trump, who is facing impeachment but says it is a 'witch hunt.' President Trump tweeted hopes that Putin and Zelensky would find a formula that would make both happy.
"U.S. President Supports Both Invader and Invadee." Heck of a better story than that he says once more that he is a hunted witch.
It used to be that we would have at least done a little token hand-wringing about the humanitarian crisis so near to our shores. But we're "America First" now, or at least our government is. And apparently the PTB haven't considered that some of Haiti's issues could spill over to neighbors. And of course accepting any refugees is out of the question.
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree that All Trump All The Time is sucking up media resources and attention that could be covering stories of more moment.
ReplyDeleteI wish more world leaders had the decency to say, "This isn't working with me at the helm; therefore I'm resigning."
Some years ago, "Farewell, Fred Voodoo," by reporter Amy Willenz who lived in Haiti for many years, outlined the mismanagement of post-quake recovery ... and that was before the hurricane decimated it and the cholera epidemic started.
ReplyDeleteCholera has only just begun to taper off after nine years. https://www.forbes.com/sites/unicefusa/2019/12/12/for-haiti-victory-is-in-sight-in-fight-against-cholera/#59473eb2bc57
A lot of the continuing problems in Haiti--and other poor countries--can be laid at the door of short-sighted international aid, rich NGOs like the Clinton Foundation with wrong-headed savior complexes, and a delusional belief that the Haitian government has the nation's interests at heart and not their own Swiss bank accounts complexes.
Money gets flung at the country's problems, corruption siphons off 90 percent of it, and what's left results in a few handouts that do not lead to the kind of employment, education, and tax base that would fix any problems long-term.
If anyone is following the WaPo's Lessons Learned series, the same thing has happened in Afghanistan. Twenty years, a trillion dollars, 2,400 troop fatalities, and the Taliban is gaining territory and the country is producing 80 percent of the world's heroin poppies.
We are dumb.
"We are dumb." Well, yeah. But what would smart aid look like in a place like Haiti?
DeleteThe Marshall Plan helped Europe unless I've missed out on some revisionist history. We may have not helped Haiti much but at least we weren't bombing them in the meantime. Right now, the dumbest and most expensive thing we are now doing, in my opinion, is foreverwar. Maybe we could improve things in our country and then the Haitians could immigrate.
DeleteAn Irishman started a cell phone company in Haiti, run by Haitians. My guess is that a cinder block company that hires Hatians that could build quality building materials to help replace substandard housing would be good. If course, you'd need.to.pay workers enough so they could buy the building materials they make to build their own homes ...
DeleteA big problem in Haiti is infrastructure. You set up a factory in Port authority Prince, and getting it into the outlying areas can be impossible. This had been a problem for coffee growers. Great coffee up in the mountains, but getting it out on dicey roads and washed out bridges is impossible. And you have to be able to afford a truck ...
Relating to our discussion previously about environmentally friendly plumbing, I had read some horror stories about Haitian waste disposal. Modern sewer systems are not widespread and most people use outhouses. Trouble is the pits underneath fill up and have to be cleaned out (unlike when my grandparents had outhouses, there was plenty of land and they just moved them). Workers have to climb down into the pits and manually scoop out the Haitian outhouses. Of course they are exposed to all manner of germs and disease. Charities got the bright idea of building a modern disposal plant. Which remains underutilized because there is no infrastructure of sewer lines to get the sewage to the plant. Relating to what Jean said about infrastructure.
DeleteCholera was not a problem in Haiti until the do-gooders built tent cities and dug open pit latrines, then went home congratulating themselves on solving the immediate need for temporary shelter and facilities. The hurricane washed the sludge into sources of clean water, and the 10-year cholera outbreak ensued.
DeleteQuake and hurricane resistant homes can be built pretty cheaply and quickly, but clearing away rubble from the quake is still ongoing.
The same things are happening or will happen in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.
I have read that underground power lines would be a boon to places bound to get hit with increasingly bad storms as the climate changes. But as long as slap-dash fixits are the norm, conditions will be increasingly untenable, and there will be surges of migration to the mainland.
And we see how welcome brown-skinned people are by Amerika. Unless they have advanced degrees, money, and their own health care.
Don't get me started.
I think helping agencies focus on short term fixits because of the immediate acute need, for instance getting people at least some shelter from the elements. Then the ball gets dropped because of lack of funds on the part of private charities, and lack of interest on the part of government agencies to go to the next step of permanent solutions.
DeleteI'm just praying that the next administration will be less America First (and only).
Hopefully, Haiti can bypass centralized power sources with distribution line infrastructure and go directly to more localized solar and wind microgrids. People yammer about not having continuous power with renewables but these poor countries probably have unpredictable blackouts anyway.
ReplyDeleteStanley, I think you're right about more localized microgrids. Wasn't that something Elon Musk was working on in Puerto Rico for the hospitals? I never heard how that turned out.
DeleteKatherine, I haven't heard much about it lately. It probably is happening but I don't know at what level. Puerto Rico should certainly go that way.
DeleteYeah, that's another story that will lie dormant until the Great Impeachment ends and some reporters can be spared from the White House driveway. A friend just returned from the Bahamas with the news that they still need "everything." I suspected that; apparently news editors didn't.
DeleteSometimes I think building good sturdy permanent things can't hurt. Here's one article about 3D printed houses in Mexico.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/business/worlds-first-3d-printed-neighborhood-trnd/index.html
Of course, my old favorite is the monolithic dome. Here's a villsge built in Indonesia after the earthquake/tsunami
https://www.monolithic.org/new-ngelepen/a-village-grows-progress-in-new-ngelepen-indonesia
Make sturdy quality things that last. Don't give them junk and crap.
Interesting houses, Stanley. I've also seen pictures of sturdy houses constructed of blocks made from recycled plastics. They solve two problems at once. There are a few dome houses in Nebraska, they seemed to be multifaceted rather than a smooth dome like these. These kind of remind me of Luke Skywalker's house on Tatooine. There are also some pretty nice houses built into the side of a hill, which should be energy efficient. The first pioneer houses were dugouts like that, of course the modern ones are fancier. Where there's a will, there's a way.
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