Bamiyan Panorama

Bamiyan Panorama

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Haiti

In college i took a social development class and one specific story stuck with me. In Haiti, in an unspecified time of recent history, many families owned a hog. This hog was their "cash cow". The details are fuzzy, but in some way or another this hog enabled them to have food and earn money. The colonial/european/american power at the time decided that all of the hogs were to be rounded up and killed. Then each Hatian family was to purchase a new pig. Not hog, PIG. These pigs were not naitive to Haiti like the hogs were. Their food needed to be imported, while the hogs ate the natural Haitian vegetation. And ultimately the pig project was an economic failure - a failure forced onto the Haitians. I think a few hogs(literally) survived hidden up in the hills somewhere.

That story seems to be on repeat for every aspect of Hatians lives. Where is the infastructure? Where is the Aid? The Aid is there, actually. Tons of it. But where are the results? You can't put a band-aid on a severed limb. You need to stop the bleeding, let it heal, and then teach it to live again. I wish I knew more about Haiti - other than centuries of negligence and oppression by whomever is in power. And plenty of band-aids to pass out.

Pray for Haiti, please.

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