Six Years

Much has happened during the last six years.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians were crushed to death in the earthquake six years ago this afternoon. The victims included women huddled together watching a popular Dominican soap opera around little televisions at 4:53 PM. The ground shook for 35 seconds, and for many of them, it was their last show.
Haiti’s most powerful Catholic prelate fell to his death from a seminary as the earthquake crushed his cathedral nearby.
Bodies were scooped up for days like pieces of heavy debris, thrown in dump trucks, and buried in a pauper’s field just north of the capital.
And I learned that earthquakes don’t really kill people, bad buildings do.
After the earthquake 13 billion dollars of money was pledged to Haiti from all over the world. However, pledged money does not mean money given. And money that was given was given to whom? And for what?
Non-government organizations were crucified relentlessly for trying to help in Haiti but not really creating sustainability.
Cholera would hit Haiti at the end of 2010 and Haiti, the land of extremes, became home to the largest and most deadly cholera outbreak in the world. The UN would not take responsibility for cholera and words like “immunity” and “impunity” still confuse me. But I do understand “shock” and “death” from extreme loss of bodily fluids.
Hillary would pick the newest Haitian president in 2011 and he would “rule by decree”.
In early 2014, I examined four-month-old baby Princess in Port. She had complex congenital heart disease but her eyes focused very clearly. Princess died after surgery but she sent a song of sympathy directly from Heaven shortly after she left us.
Chikungunya virus hit Haiti in 2014 and made millions of Haitians quite ill. And now Zika virus (from the same mosquito vector) is sickening Haitians but we have to be quiet about it right now. And nine months from now someone may need to explain the number of Haitian babies being born with small heads and brains and intellects.
One-third of Haitians are food insecure or starving now and we can’t blame this on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad or his barrel bombs.
Daughters of Charity Sisters (and also very dear friends of ours) were burglarized in their own home in Port-au-Prince last year and beaten by the bandits…the very people they serve. Insanity rules.
In June of 2015 people with Haitian blood (some who only speak Spanish) went running and screaming from the Dominican Republic after they were told they were no longer welcome in the sugar cane fields. These folks and their children are now “stateless” and tens of thousands of them are camped on the Haitian-Dominican border in a desert existing in cardboard huts. Neither Dominican or Haitian governments act like they exist and they have no civil rights. Cholera and malnutrition and lack of hope are picking these people apart.
And Haitian politics and elections and the omnipresent corruption are an embarrassment for Haiti as 2016 comes tumbling in. People manifest in the streets almost every day because they can’t live another six years like this.
www.haitianhearts.org
http://blogs.pjstar.com/haiti/2016/01/12/six-years/