Haiti Watch

Where are we? Who are we? Don’t we ask these kinds of questions when there is nothing we can do about the damage afterwards. The damage done. But let us try. It is 2010, and the pandemic of poverty in the first black republic of our times did not make any of it any easier. Everything, shelters, economy, infrastructures were already fragile there. And now… Everyone has said everything that can be said. But we must say more, what we can. What has happened to the country and people of Haiti has provided for us a new definition for the words, tragedy, catastrophic, calamity. The executive director of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) said something else very interesting on NPR yesterday. He said Haiti needs an entire restructuring of government, infrastructure and public policy. But who will do it? Him, us? I wish, hope, wish we could trust those words. That they will produce something. Hope, wish, hope Haiti will be taken good care of in the hands of the world. In our hands. Yes, send money. Yes, if you can, when it is safe and your job will not fire you, make your way there. But we have seen how history has dealt Haiti all the double-faced cards in the deck. Who are we? Where are we? It was 1994 or 5. I remember the day Aristide was spirited off the island of Haiti years ago by the CIA after a military coup. That is another story, but it is almost as if I can still see his light leaving Haiti across the wounded sky. Aristide was a poet..I wonder what Aristide’s pen is writing now.