This Is Haiti BEFORE the Earthquake

A shopping area in the city's most wealthy hillside neighborhood
notice the plaster-walled homes, and that luckily this rich area has paved streets

look to the right of the photo, the little homes built right into the hillside. Those are shanties, constructed of plaster and wood walls, no foundations and tin roofs. The government has a tax for each wall you construct, and another tax upon completion of a home-so many Haitians will build a home that is missing an entire wall, so they can avoid the tax required to live in finished quarters.

The edge of a shanty town, look in front of the tin roofed houses and see the garbage that has built up for so long and has all but decomposed. It is said the government of Haiti-to profit for itself-sold all the public dumsters to its neighboring country, the Dominican Republic. This was the explanation i was given when I asked why there was garbage in every nook and cranny of the city

this is the construction of a large home in the city. See the gravel on the left? That is what is used to create cement, it is ground and mixed into a plaster/paste. Instead of sturdy 2x4's you can see the many sticks that make up the frames of the walls.

Many many men serve as day laborers on construction sites like these. These men are hungry and want to feed themselves and their families. They have no education and very little experience. Mistakes are made routinely in construction-electricity and plumbing issues are common due to unskilled labor

One cannot escape the news of the terrible earthquake that has devistated the capital of Haiti. I travled to Haiti 6 years ago to help my dear friend Susie bring two children home to be part of her family. It was a completely life changing experience for me. I had never visited a country that lacked hope like this nation. Corruption at every turn, mothers handing their children over to the orphanages because they could not feed them any more (I witnessed this first hand. A mother, with her 3-4 year old daughter all dressed in pigtails and ribbons, tried to get the woman we were staying with to take her only child. That lack of motherly instinct was due to hopelessness. It was terrifying to me-who was desperately homesick for my 4 children all safe and fed at home with their daddy in Boise Idaho-to watch a woman about my age have such a willingness to relinquish the motherly instinct I was swimming in at that moment).

During the week I was there, we visited several orphanages and I spent time with Rebecca Maisato-a humanitarian who had moved there with her daughters from Provo Utah to help the fatherless and destitute. I learned so much from Rebecca, who had "found" nine (I think!) boys on the streets in various miraculous ways and had come to feel that these boys were to belong to her forever. She was trying (it took her 3-4 years to succeed in her efforts) to get the boys out of Haiti and to the states to receive an education, but as she waited she worked. She taught the boys in school (they ranged in age from about 9-16 I think) and then they all went out in their little pick up truck and visited the orphanages, helped at the shelters and fed children who were living on the streets. She had literally given away everything she had and was relying on the donations of others so she could be the eyes and ears of who needed help and how.

I'm so happy she and the boys are safe in the States (some of them now serve missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Watching Rebecca read the book of Mormon with these stripling warriors was the experience of a lifetime. Each one, when introduced to the gospel of Jesus Christ by Rebecca and the full time missionaries in their area, accepted and embraced the gospel.)

The faces of the babies I held in the orphanages that week have surfaced to my mind in the days since the earthquake struck. The people I met at church. The man who drove us around. The woman who did laundry and cooking for Rebecca. I've thought of them like ghosts wandering through my memory.

While I "hang out" with my sisters on a fun girls' weekend there are so many who suffer. Children who are now fatherless. Mothers whose babies are trapped. I don't mean to be morbid. I know God knows them all. But it is important to remember that WE are His hands on Earth. Perhaps we cannot lift those in Haiti from their poverty and devastation. But there are others, all around us, whose lives we can help to improve.

Think globally, remember the world is a very big place and that most of the people who live in it do not have the wealth and comfort we have. Do what you feel is best, but Do SOMETHING to lift the load of poverty that weighs down the vast majority of this world.

God bless the people of Haiti.