It's quite clear that Haiti has a lot of healing to do. Once it becomes stable after last month's horrific earthquake, the crumbling nation's situation still faces the Haitian people. It's not going away when CNN stops covering it.
It's popular to wonder what will become of Haiti? What will they do? The situation is currently pretty grim--the nerve center of the already devastated country has been paralyzed--it is basically without infrastructure, government, and not to mention a huge chunk of its population. People are asking where the relief efforts are centered and where is all that money we donated going? I can't say for sure the answers to those questions, but I can pose a fairly common sense theory on how to start the country out on the right foot, perhaps in a way it hasn't known in a very long time.
I look at this country as a beautiful opportunity to start over. With a lot of help, these people can start over. First of all we must ask ourselves what does Haiti need above all else? Relief efforts aside, the country is in dire need of food, even the hospitals haven't had clean water in years, and the atrocious standard of poverty they live in requires jobs and a way to keep the economy flowing. Am I mistaken or is Haiti not a tropical island? If you approach it as the building of any new community, one of the first things you do is plant seeds that will provide a bounty later. For a tropical nation Haiti is obscenely barren, and that has its reasons, but it doesn't need to go on forever. I understand that Haiti's history is extremely political and rife with pain due to multiple colonizations by France, Spain, and America. A large part of the landscape has been stripped of its resources, and geographically, Haiti's rainfall is largely redirected to its infinitely more successful counterpart, the Dominican Republic. But truthfully, everyone needs to start healing from the past and look forward, look to the present, to make smart decisions about how to start succeeding. Why don't we start by planting trees? The lack of trees in Haiti is a huge part of what makes life so difficult. Their indigenous woods have been plundered, leaving the construction of homes and buildings up to concrete, which we all know is not very durable in an earthquake. With trees the severity of hurricanes and earthquakes would diminish and rainfall would increase. This all without mentioning the amount of food that can be produced. Tropical trees are a glorious way to start feeding Haitian people again without relying on any imports, aside from the trees themselves. Every family should have a dozen avocados, coconuts, bananas, papayas, and mangos. Trees are the lifeblood of humanity--they're not just for treehuggers! I'm aware that there already is a tree-planting organization, Christian of course (they seem to be the only ones to really get organized!), called Fast Growing Trees (www.fast-growing-trees.com). This gives me hope; we need a lot more like them.
I've seen conflicting records of Haiti's rainfall, but it appears to be enough to catch, however much it is. The state of Haiti's water supply is hugely responsible for its alarming average life expectancy of just 49 years. More infants and mothers die during childbirth than in any other country. More children die before the age of 5 than any other country. Humans cannot exist without clean water. But where does water come from? Certainly not the faucet. It comes from the sky. They need a sophisticated water catchment system. All it takes is a huge container, some pipes, and some prayers for rain. Hippie communities in Hawaii can figure this out--can the rest of the world? It would take a small system of organization to get water catchments built all over the country, if not in everyone's backyard.
Like I said, these ideas are fairly common sense, but the bigger question may be "who's going to be in charge of it?" Haiti's government has a long history of corruption, as most colonized nations do. The UN is almost completely useless, and a few too many industrialized nations have had their grubby paws in this not-so-much-honey pot for far too long. Instead, a collective of organizations who care need to step up, a communal and effective system. It's going to take money and resources, but not that much. President Obama just released his plan for this year's budget of $3.8 trillion. Do we all realize how much a trillion dollars is? Not to mention three of them? There is clearly more than enough money on this planet to attract to the cause. In just a couple weeks' time the American people raised millions of dollars just in relief aid alone. If it were all planned out, I would be very interested to know how much it would cost to start a consistent system of transporting seeds, trees, building resources, and educators to Haiti to successfully start this project.
If Haiti cannot stand on its own, others must stand up for support. That's just the way it is. Imagine the livelihoods and sense of purpose that could be created by doling out daily jobs to Haiti's people. Educate the masses in sustainable development, and I have no doubt they would be infinitely grateful for the opportunity. Once they all know how to plant and maintain the vegetation, assign them sections of town. Get them connected and working their land again. There is the speculation that the resentment Haiti feels after hundreds of years of slavery and exploitation will be a deterrent in getting these people to "do what we say," but that bullshit needs to go once and for all. I couldn't agree more, the industrialized world is a corrupt, sinister, robotic corporation that has done a lot of evil. But organizations and individuals that care are not their megalomaniac governments. People do not get anywhere or grow by harboring hostility and resentment. It is our responsibility to remind Haiti of what it is, who they are, and what they are truly capable of. No golf courses or resorts for rich white people involved!
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