Ever since the earthquake hit Haiti, I’ve been proud of America’s reaction. From the very first day, astonishing amounts of food, money and aid have poured into Haiti from all parts of the nation.
Text message campaigns have raised millions of dollars for the relief fund. Many doctors, including one from St. Thomas, have gone to Haiti to perform surgeries and treat diseases such as dysentery. We don’t often band together like this to help a struggling nation, and it’s definitely a good thing.
But why did it take an earthquake to make us help Haiti?
It’s no secret that Haiti is desperately poverty-stricken and has been for a long time. A few of my friends have taken mission trips to Haiti, and they told me about the unbearable living conditions there.
One of my friends returned from a mission trip to Haiti the day before the earthquake hit. She and a group of students spent their time there helping out at a mission clinic, caring for the sick and injured in one of Haiti’s poorest areas.
She told me about 5-year-olds who came into the clinic, weighing only 15 pounds. The missionaries would hand out food, but they only had enough to give to the children with the worst cases of malnutrition.
She said most of the houses in the area were simply tarps draped over sticks. If a family owned a house with four walls and a roof, they were considered rich. The floors of the houses were made entirely of mud, so when it rains, the streets turn into rivers.
And these were the conditions before the earthquake hit.
Why does it take a natural disaster, a dramatic documentary or celebrity attention for us to notice a country in need and want to help? So many countries out there need help, but we only deem them worthy of our attention when the media spotlight shines on them.
We shouldn’t solely focus on the countries with the most newsworthy problems. It’s wrong to wait for a disaster and then send money when we could have been helping all along.
The damage in Haiti might have been much less extensive if we had been donating millions of dollars to well-run charities before the earthquake. Then those charities could have helped fix the infrastructure and build safe houses. The damage from the earthquake may have been much less catastrophic.
There are so many countries that could benefit from the same assistance Haiti has received – Sierra Leone, the Congo, Ethiopia and many more. Are we going to wait until an earthquake devastates one of these countries before we start trying to help?
Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.
I personally find it sad that so many people have what appears to me to be a sense of guilt for being Americans and feel the need to look back through the past and say “we didn’t do enough” or something along those lines and this will be an attempt to clarify some points regarding past assistance for Haiti. In the case of the misinformed author of this article the claim that “The damage in Haiti might have been much less extensive if we had been donating millions of dollars to well-run charities before the earthquake. Then those charities could have helped fix the infrastructure and build safe houses. The damage from the earthquake may have been much less catastrophic.” Unfortunately what the author fails to realize is that America DID donate millions to Haiti prior to “the earthquake”. In 2008 alone almost 300 Million in aid was given to the Haitians through USAID (United States Agency for International Development), prior to that the number held steady right around 200 Million per year from 2004-2008 and in April of 2009 that same organization pledged 700 Million, so to say that things had not been done is a false accusation and I am not sure where the idea that so many have that we just sort of left Haiti to be all on its own and fend for itself comes from.
But USAID is a government organization, and I think she was referring more to our role as citizens. Also, just as a comparison, in 2009 USAID gave around $1.5 billion in aid to Afghanistan, $1 billion to Pakistan, $500 million to Sudan, and only $700 million of USAID’s total budget went towards infrastructure costs worldwide.
That said, US agricultural policy has had a significant negative impact on the Haitian economy- as well as population distribution (i.e. population growth in urban areas as people moved from farming areas that were no longer economically viable despite the fact that there wasn’t infrastructure to accomodate the existing population, let alone new comers, in urban areas).