Earthquake hits Haiti

Why does it always seem that natural disasters on a massive scale occur in places around the world that can least cope with them?

Yet again this proved true this week when a 7.0 earthquake has caused the loss of possibly up to 100,000 lives in impoverished Haiti.

When I was in Haiti in 2004, I remember wondering to myself how the locals ever got through one hurricane season after the next. The buildings and local infrastructure looked as if one had just been through. Homes and offices already looked like houses of cards and it was easy to see that this was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Hurricane Jeanne

I was working in scuba diving in the Dominican Republic at the time and had gone across the border into Haiti with one of the other guys I was working with for a family celebration. Like so often is the case, the local Haitians had pretty close to nothing in terms of material stuff, but were among the happiest and most spiritual I have ever met.

Three weeks after I was there, Hurricane Jeanne ripped through the Dominican Republic and neighbouring Haiti, leaving around 5,000 dead in Haiti alone. This all came only eight months after a coup that ended in the United Nations installing Gerard Latortue as the new leader of Haiti.

Following the devestation of Hurricane Jeanne, foreign aid and money poured into the country but unfortunately very little of it ended up where it was needed. It is widely believed that the new administration just pocketed most of it.

The roads that were never rebuilt with that money, the homes and offices that never received the benefit of the aid, are the same infrastructure that has collapsed yet again in the latest devestation, claiming the lives of so many more Haitians.

Help on its way

Such has been the destruction in the country, combined with their usual relative isolation from mainstream media, that help, although now well on its way from the worldwide community, was slow coming. The task of rebuilding this struggling nation – yet again – will fall on the rest of the world’s governments who, it seems, usually do their best to avoid thinking about Haiti or this part of the impoverished Caribbean at all.

You might be thinking, “what a hypocrite, he worked in the Dominican Republic teaching rich people to dive while the locals practically starved” and in some part that’s true. But I lived among the people as a local – ate with them, partied with them and, importantly, got paid the same as them.

I feel like I have some insight, albeit very slightly, into the suffering they are now enduring and if nothing else, as a World Citizen, I want to do something to help them.

If you are able to help them too, you can make a financial donation to the Red Cross.

If you are not able to help with money, then promoting this type of article and the links to the aid agencies through your social networking sites, praying to whatever it is you see as God, or simply becoming more aware of disadvantaged places outside of our comfortable existence will also help.

NOTE: If anyone knows of any organisations in Australia that have set up relief funds, please post the information in the comments below. Thanks.

.

Plan International Australia

Sponsor a child for just over $1 a day or $43 a month and support a community over time by connecting with a child who acts as a community representative. Funds raised from child sponsorship go to projects chosen by the community, focused around health, education, livelihood, habitat and building relationships. Plan International Australia needs 23 sponsors of children in Haiti right now. The life expectancy in Haiti is just 52 years. The literacy rate is just 51% and only 54% of Haitians have access to safe drinking water. Click on the image above to find out how you can help.