HAITIAN RELIEF NEEDS CASH NOW

A little over 30 years ago I made my first visit to Haiti. I was serving as the denominational youth director and flew in to conduct a youth retreat at our church and school at Borel in the Artibonite Valley of central Haiti. It was a somewhat sanitized visit where they carefully watched what I would eat lest I get sick and be unable to carry out my speaking assignment. My contacts were primarily missionaires and Haitian Christians, or doctors from the states working at our clinic at Pierre Payen (which is now recieving earthquake victims transported out of Port-au-Prince)- therefore my encounters were generally pleasant. Except for being bullied by an angry street vendor in Port who thought I should not hold so tightly onto my American dollars, I had no "bad moments" personally.

But what could not be hidden or sanitized was the extreme poverty of what was then called a "third world nation." Rivers of garbage running through the middle of Port-au-Prince, accident victims lying by the side of the road after being run down by a trucks, a gleeming new Shell Station with only rationed gas to sell, children with no clothes standing in the their "yards" bellied distended from hunger, children at the Albert Schweitzer hospital suffering from tetanus, people scavenging for food, people sitting by the roadside with looks of hopelessness in their eyes, soldiers at roadblock swaggering menacingly as they searched for who knows what oand suggesting that a bribe might move this faster. And in 1978 Haiti was relatively prosperous compared to today.

My second visit in 1998 did nothing to alleviate my original observations--except to see churches and Christian hospitals and school where hope and help were provided to people that their government had failed. But by now the hillsides were stripped of their trees to make charcoal to fuel cook fires. People were barely making $2-3 a month to have hard cash. Trash was everywhere and commodities that we could find at our local Turkey Hill or Seven Eleven were unavailable. We had to travel out of Port by a circuitous route because the US Marines could not assure the safety from the robber gangs in various parts of the city. By now Haiti had become what some would have to call a "fourth world country." In fact now, ten years later, there is no nation so poor and its people in such dire straits as Haiti. Some aggressive reinvestment plans initiated by the UN and former Presidents Clinton and Bush had barely taken hold when this earthquake struck, driving Haiti even deeper into a pit of problems and despair.

Supplies are finally getting out of the airport - barely. Despite one news commentator's callous comment, "the UN needs to get to work NOW", he obviously had not heard that the UN's presence had been devastated by the collapse of UN headquarters in the quake. The body of its chief officer found only yesterday in the rubble. The US military seems to be the most effective identity at this moment to help the Haitians, and even they must contend with logistical problems on the ground that make their work extremely difficult.

Right now - Haitian relief needs cash for supplies. Whatever your connection--church, Red Cross, whatever--stop packing clothes, boxing food and bottling water. Get the cash to the people who can use it best to help the Haitianms.