Day 3 - Feb 15

I got an early start to the day, which began with the same yummy hotel breakfast.  The plumbing was not working in my room, and they were able to transfer me to a different room by the end of the day.  It was frustrating but could have been much worse.  I skipped lunch again, and settled for a can of soup for dinner.  I could have gone to the hotel restaurant for dinner, but am feeling totally worn out and the need to rest beat out hunger in the end.  My mind is totally turned upside down right now trying to process everything I’m seeing.  I was lucky that Judge Judy was on the TV when I got back to my room…nothing like a little JJ to help me decompress. 

Although I’m physically in Haiti, I’m totally disconnected from all things Haitian.  I’m driven around in a car like all of the other white people, and we don’t even so much as open the car windows.  It’s too dangerous to walk anywhere, so it’s almost like I’m watching the whole thing on TV.  It’s not that people look so unhappy, in fact, it’s much the opposite.  Everyone seems to be going along on their business as if everything is normal.  It’s anything but normal to me.  The trash and the stench of burning trash is everywhere.  People wash and go to the bathroom right in the street, and it’s totally normal to them because the tent city is too cramped to do these things.  The most surprising thing is that the children look generally very happy, contrary to what I would have thought.  Around mid-day they are all out in their school uniforms walking in packs on their way home from school, smiling and laughing.  The babies and little children are a bit of a different story.  I have seen a few of them looking pretty miserable and potbellied, running around without diapers and sometimes completely naked.  I always thought of diapers as a necessity, but I’m discovering that it’s all relative to your starting point.   

Another thing that struck me today was the total lack of heavy machinery around.  I know that this might seem like a strange thing to notice in such a chaotic situation, but there is construction going on all over the place and they are supposedly ‘rebuilding’ from the earthquake.  The factory I visited to today is still missing a number of walls and the manager said they lost 30 workers in the earthquake.  The entire economic system here is based on the concept of a cheap labor, which places an extremely low value on human life.  The concept of efficiency doesn’t exist, because there is a limitless supply of cheap labor.  Ten Haitian men will work all day moving rubble, which would have taken a machine less than half an hour to accomplish.  The ‘rebuilding’ effort is moving at a snail’s pace, and the people seem to have adapted the tent city rubble version of Haiti as the ‘new normal’.  Unfortunately, one average sized hurricane will inevitably wipe this ‘new normal’ off the map.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, I have absolutely no suggestions for what we can do to help Haiti.  I’m not sure where the money is going, and most of the donated items are being sold on the street.   It’s completely overwhelming.