
Trying to Help in Haiti - Mz
http://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/caribbean/haiti/Does-Foreign-Aid-to-Haiti-Do-Any-Good.html
======
bargl
I'm going to share my experience with HN here. It is a treasured experience,
and something I hold near and dear to my heart. I was able to spend 3 months
in Haiti as a volunteer. It was supposed to stay for a year. It was after the
earthquake and I was stoked to go down.

When I was there I didn't really have any real work to do. They wanted me to
create some software but this was the beginning of my "Hacker" career and I
was using Access (don't judge). But the thing I really did while I was down
there was play with the kids.

That piece of my time down there was more treasured then anything else I have.
I got to know the kids so well it was heartbreaking to leave. One of the
parents asked me to take his son (who was my pal and Creole teacher) to the US
with me.

Just take a moment to think about that. This man loved his son. He took him to
work and he was proud of him. You could see it in his eyes. Ose was a GREAT
kid, mischievous, but great. His father was willing to sacrifice his time with
his son for me to take him. I honestly didn't want to say no.

I built similar relationships with some of the girls at the orphanage. I can
still remember the sound of them singing one night. It was the saddest most
beautiful song I'd ever heard. 50 orphan girls were singing while beating the
rhythm on whatever they had at hand. I don't know the lyrics but that moment
was sorrow and happiness.

I had to leave suddenly and wasn't able to make it back, due to riots that
closed the airport and running out of savings. When I finally could go back, I
decided to go to Bolivia instead, there is a more stable volunteer community
there and I could afford it.

I've never regretted something more then not returning to Haiti, but given the
choice I'd do it again. I know that in my short time there I was able to make
friend and pick up peoples spirits. I know that doesn't seem like a lot, but
it was.

I'm still looking for a way to go back and help again, but I just don't know
how. I think this sponsorship program sounds like a GREAT idea. This is
something so many of the kids down there need.

~~~
rch
Have a look at the Colorado Haiti Project. A friend of mine works with them,
and says they've been managed to be effective by focusing on one particular
area. The leadership and dedication of a few individuals in the local
community has been critical as well.

~~~
bargl
Thank you. I'm looking into it now.

------
spydum
The real question is what would have his life been like without that aid?
Perhaps no education, no money for health care. Perhaps even loss of life (or
a family member)?

On aside, since it was covered so heavily: I have heard of more than a few
people who lose their faith due to church behavior. This seems almost immature
thinking to me. If you see a problem with church leadership behavior, and you
don't see fault in the beliefs, why not affect change in the church? Ask those
tough questions about what money is spent on. This seems far more logical than
abandoning faith.

~~~
x0x0
Why is it immature to see people preach one way, behave a separate way, and
conclude they're full of shit? It seems a basic requirement of a reasonable
human being that people preaching that folks should behave way X comport
themselves in way X.

eg the catholic church is, at this point, practically a child rape conspiracy:
over and over people in the church discovered what was going on, and over and
over they chose to tolerate the behavior to protect the church. Just to pick
one notable example, the pope chose not to defrock a priest that molested _TWO
HUNDRED_ boys in his care [1], instead squirreling him off to northern
wisconsin... where he had more access to children. As their book says, you
shall know them by their fruits. This was an act performed by the head of the
catholic church.

If you can stomach the acts performed by the church and the totality of the
church hierarchy, then still believe what they preach, I'd say you're
practically deluded.

[1] [http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/26/wisconsin-
prie...](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/26/wisconsin-priest-
molests-200-d/)

~~~
inportb
> Why is it immature to see people preach one way, behave a separate way, and
> conclude they're full of shit?

It's not. Concluding that people are unreasonable and summarily dismissing
what they preach is what seems immature. One might instead realize that a
church and its religion are related but distinct... that although people may
not perfectly embody what they preach, the beliefs themselves may be virtuous.

~~~
lmm
I don't think anyone these days comes to religion as a logical explanation for
observed facts. The nonexistence of a personal interventionist god (Clarke's
"Alpha") is a couple of lines and Occam's razor; the nonexistence of a
universe-creating god (Clarke's "Omega") doesn't even need the couple of
lines.

The rationale usually given for religion these days is as a source of moral
guidance; the bible may not be literally true, but it's full of wisdom you can
apply to your daily life. The Church isn't really about preparing for the
second coming of Jesus, but it helps bind the community together; it provides
a place you can go for moral advice, a way to direct charitable efforts,
shared rituals that help people know each other and so on.

But those matters are things you can judge through observation. If I know
christians and atheists, and I observe that the atheists are living more moral
lives than the christians, then even on the kind of grounds I've described
above, I absolutely should choose to be atheist.

~~~
ClashTheBunny
A lack of a belief in God, Atheism, isn't equal to Naturalism, a belief that
there is nothing but what is measurable. There is quite a bit of room between
the two.

Many early Christians were called Atheists because they denied the existence
of other gods. Yet today they (and others) have forgotten the times before
they were a dominant world view. True religious imperialists.

~~~
lazylizard
atheists don't go around evangelizing, do they?

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a complex subject, and it reminds me of the science fiction book The
Sparrow. Please, no spoilers from the commenters. I remember reading the
author saying that one of the premises of the book is that in our relationship
with God, [or karma or the unknown or the universe or whatever], many times we
create all these causalities that really don't exist. _So I 'll do this, and
then that will happen_

I was reminded of this in several parts of the essay, like when people write
the kids and tell them just to work hard, and things will work out for them.
Or when the author expected that for the money he sent, something better would
have happened.

This is almost universally a recipe for terrible letdowns in life.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, we do things because they are the right
things to do. The universe is random in many ways and acts in ways we may not
easily comprehend. A person chooses to work hard because they believe that
working hard has value, and a life spent working at something they value is
more precious than one spent passively looking on. A person gives to some
charity because they believe that making that choice makes their own life more
authentic.

I'm not saying that perhaps there isn't some better way of accomplishing all
these important goals of getting out of poverty or helping those in Haiti. I'm
saying that we all make personal decisions that demonstrate to others and
ourselves the things that we value. That the real story here isn't something
along the lines of "I pushed this button, and nothing happened" but more like
"I made this decision because these things were important to me"

Or maybe I'm just too much of an existentialist :)

~~~
mercurial
I'm not sure what you're getting at? Sure, we're often trying to do the right
thing, but it doesn't invalidate the fact that it's worth it to investigate
whether what we do actually works. Otherwise, aren't we just going back to the
issue you raised in your first paragraph and invent non-existent cause-to-
effect relationships, because we are working under invalid assumptions?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You seem to be implying an either-or choice where one does not exist. Of
course we should evaluate the results of our actions. And of course that
information should be used next time.

What we can't do is somehow try to add it all up after the fact to figure out
if it was worth it or not. At the time we make decisions based on what we know
and who we are. It's our embrace of our uncertainty of knowledge yet courage
to make what we feel our moral choices anyway that is noble. The author seemed
to try to be figuring out if what he did was the right thing or not. That's
whacked. Instead, the question is whether, knowing what he did then, he was
authentic to who he was.

Let's try this a different way. You could replay the exact same article with
three different conclusions. The kid could have escaped poverty and went on to
law school. The kid could have been a farce made up by the religious guy. The
kid could have spent all the money on drugs. Who cares? If you care about
Haiti and the larger situation, it's all anecdotal anyway. If you don't care
about the larger situation, then this story is just about the unique and
personal experiences each of the participants has. There is no larger story.
So all of this other stuff about the macro situation is just a form of
projection the author is experiencing while trying to make sense of his own
experience. That's fine -- as long as he understands it. But in the end it's
just a framing technique.

The personal story was the author trying to figure out if things he had no
idea about -- what was actually happening with his money -- were important to
the decisions and feelings he had about his own religion during his teen
years. It's almost like he was an observer of his own life. There's a strange
disconnect.

What was really going on, for both he and the kid, was that they were taking a
big piece of fuzzy, unfortunate, and difficult life situation and making hard
choices about what to do. The kid stays with his family. He doesn't stand out,
stays with the herd. The author still sends money, but is unsure why, except
to say that would have been even worse. Then he realizes that he's so involved
that he has to know what's been going on. Why the change of heart? I'm not
exactly sure. Is he really worried about evangelizing kids? Also, I left the
article not really being sure. The most important part of the story, the
decisions he made, is the foggiest. He walks right by the most important part
of all of this, his own values, and instead waves his hands around at the
preacher, the county, the NGO, dumb westerners, and so on. Then he continues
to give! It's like he does these things and doesn't know why.

In my mind these choices are where the real story is, not trying to piece it
all together into some kind of uber narrative about Haiti (or religious NGOs)
in general (which would also be a good story.)

~~~
mercurial
That's an interesting way to look at it. But you seem to be neglecting the
emotional angle, and his (somewhat vicarious) connection to the boy. He wanted
to know if anything that he imagined was grounded in reality.

I agree that the article is a bit confusing. What was he really thinking? But
I got the feeling the author was just as confused. At any rate, I learned some
things, and it was pleasantly written, so not a waste of time.

------
cllns
For those interested in learning more about why Haiti is so impoverished,
Junot Díaz wrote a great and powerful piece a few years ago in the Boston
Review.

"Haiti’s nightmarish vulnerability has to be understood as part of a larger
trend of global inequality."

[1]: [http://bostonreview.net/junot-diaz-apocalypse-haiti-
earthqua...](http://bostonreview.net/junot-diaz-apocalypse-haiti-earthquake)

~~~
ClashTheBunny
The whole paragraph that ends the previous section is, to me, more salient
than the quoted sentence itself. Haiti is a microcosm of world iniquity, but
it is also a very special hell created by the powers that were (and the powers
that be). A better way to state the sentence may be "Haiti’s nightmarish
vulnerability has to be understood as [the future] trend of global inequality
[for all of us]".

~~~
gohrt
> iniquity,

accidentally relevant typo

> but it is also a very special hell created by the powers that were

not very special, though.. so many improverished/war-torn nations have a
similar story with different character names.

------
mynameishere
Absent mineral resources, the only organizations that could help Haiti in its
present state are textile and garment manufacturers. That has been the
consistent pattern for the past ~200 years. The author hinted quite strongly
where his money went--nice shoes for the kid, and a nice house for the NGO
officers.

------
calibraxis
Bizarre. He's apparently from the country which smashes Haiti
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-
Bertrand_Aristide#Return_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-
Bertrand_Aristide#Return_to_Haiti)), yet he's troubled about religious groups.
How can such an article be high on "Hacker News", yet there is no serious
analysis of why things are as they are? Do "hackers" ignore the context of
problems they work on?

Do clueless Brits and Dutchmen fly to countries their governments ravaged, and
scratch their heads about such things?

~~~
ClashTheBunny
I hear British people say the exact same stuff when the get to the US. It's a
pretty standard reaction...

~~~
mercurial
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? That Britain ravaged the US?

~~~
ClashTheBunny
Sorry, it was just a joke. I am neither in the party of people who thought
that British overlords were that bad nor that they were detrimental. It's more
of a joke that we were a former colony and would be an example of the former
overlords coming in and pitying the former colonies.

"Oh, these poor people don't have health care provided for them. Wow, these
people have pretty dismal public transport. Did you notice all of the police
presence with guns? This is probably a pretty dangerous place."

