I love this picture. I love the colors - they're hopeful in a surrounding environment of too many muted shades of depressive and sad. I smiled at the time I took the photo, and thought how beautiful it was. I recalled how Reg had told me one of the blessings right after the quake was that fresh fruits and vegetables were able to be brought into Port au Prince almost immediately from the surrounding agricultural areas.
This earthquake left Port au Prince a landscape of grey and dark - crumbled concrete, grey dust, piles of dark garbage ... dirty water. These beautiful fruits & vegetables represent one of Haiti's resources that looms large as a source of hope and opportunity for its people.
Below is the link to an article that speaks to the issue:
With Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can't Feed Herself
A quote from the piece:
"Decades of inexpensive imports - especially rice from the U.S. - punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.
While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.
They're led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton - now U.N. special envoy to Haiti - who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that destroyed Haiti's rice production. Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."
For those who want to know how to help Haiti, I offer the thought that you can be of immense help by just educating yourself a little about the issues involved in bringing the country back from not only this disaster - but from all that has happened to Haiti in her past.
So many times while I was there, in discussions with Reg and others, the sentiment was expressed that perhaps the positive thing that can come out of such a negative and horrible tragedy - is that this earthquake and the resultant horrendeous conditions it has left Haiti with - bring light to what was wrong before it hit. That with awareness of the problems Haiti faced before, the assistance offered in the aftermath will take a new form that (yes, this is going to be a theme, and a necessary one) empowers the people and enables them to live in a world where they can have hope for the future.
I sit and write about all of this and it's hard not to see correlations with issues in our own country - so many places in the world. I suppose it's fair to say that being thrown first-hand into the disaster of Haiti; being given the opportunity to understand the cause and effect of Haiti's history on conditions now; having the gift of meeting, talking with and gaining the perspective of people who have actually lived much of that history - woke me up.
It's a process I suppose. Haiti wakes me up and makes me aware of things I didn't see before; makes me care in the immediacy of its need; teaches me to look deeper and educate myself; gives me a sense of immediate connection and to see the power of small actions combined - the value of getting out of my world. By a larger design I think I'm deliberately drawn to this now. But I can also see how it is opening me up to realize a bigger picture - and how the larger world, and the world I live in here in my country - will fit into that picture also.
I continue since I've returned to learn all I can, using the resources of the internet - reading books - beginning the process of organizing all of the information I returned from this trip with. I thought the "Journey" was my 5 day trip to Haiti. Daily I realize the Journey has really only begun. It's an admittedly depressive one sometimes ... I am appalled at some of the things I'm learning. Sad to realize how naive I've been in ways.
But its also a hopeful journy. I'm realizing that as intimidating as the problems are; however insignificant I might feel I am, and as follows, daunted by the thought I could ever offer anything truly helpful to the overwhelming situation? The examples of people who must have felt the same way nevertheless doing what they can, in very brave and meaningful ways - says its the least I can do too. And seeing the tangible little things that have been done by those people, over time leading to significant bigger things - yes, gives me hope.
Want to do a little thing?
Click on Project Medishare - or Aviation for Humanity - or Art Creation Foundation for Children - or Partners In Health and make a donation. I promise you all of these organizations will put the funds where they will do the most good - now.
Thank you............................
