The forgotten country

Missionaries, non-profits and international aid projects come and go.  Many Haitians long for a visa and leave the first chance they get.  The rest live on and make the best of it. It’s a land of beauty and filth, chaos and disorder, kindness and tears, flooded with lovely humans and peppered with a few evil ones too.

Circa 2003.  I'm the one with the pick axe :).

I first stepped foot on this island some 22 years ago.   I was young, naïve and optimistic.  I am no longer young and I hope not as naïve.  But optimistic?  Now there's a question.  I often find myself making mental lists of how I would fix this place.  Root out the corruption, focus on the basic needs of food, water and shelter, create systems to deal with the trash, sewage, drainage and water supply.  It could be such a beautiful country if not for the trash and deforestation.  The people could live longer, healthier and more comfortable lives if there was at least a minimum level of basic infrastructure.

So many have tried and mostly failed.   Most have left.  There are more paved roads, buildings and people than there were 22 years ago.  But the mountains of trash and filth have only grown. The government seems to have given up and gangs control the key centers of power.  It's been years since I passed through Port au Prince, once the economic center of the country and now treated as a leper colony – you could go there but there's a good chance you wouldn't return.

A recently completed well.

I've been working in Haiti full-time since 2012 traipsing up and down mountains in search of water and ways to get it to the people.  I've trained a few engineers over the years who I hope are making a difference wherever they're planted.  Staring at a blinking courser now wondering if its all been worth it.  Each trip seems to exhaust me more and more.  Burnt to a crisp, starving and so tired that I seem to be able to sleep anywhere and at any hour – I can't seem to get back to Miami fast enough.

Fritz and I a few days ago

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.  But teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime.  This has been my mantra since day one.  But without a school, resources or more than a couple students at a time its hard to see any progress.  I still travel on moto taxis, sleep in cheap hotels and splurge for AC whenever I can. International donors spend upwards of $100 million a year on water projects in Haiti and few projects function more a few months.  The only water system in Haiti that functions 24/7 is Pignon where we spent $50,000 to put in a few valves and water meters.  Its been a fight every day, but it's been going strong now for 6 years.

Typical Haitian fare.

Like so many before me, it would be easier to leave this place behind.  But forget it? Never.