The
Trials Of Haiti
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Art
Work by Armand Fleurimond
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AT
the winter of 2003, when war loomed in Iraq and every rock
was suspected of concealing a terrorist, one might have
imagined that the last thing on the minds of American diplomats
would be a little impoverished country like Haiti, a mere
third of an island, which lacks even an army. But the United
States has a foreign policy everywhere, and, as a rule,
the weaker and poorer the nation, the more powerful the
policy is.
Most
Americans if they visited Haiti would, I imagine, come away
with new definitions of poverty. What you notice most of
all are absences of the most basic things. Water, for instance.
In a recent survey of the potable water supplies in 147
nations, Haiti ranked 147th. It's estimated that only 40
percent of Haiti's roughly 8 million people have access
to clean water.
In
the capital, Port-au-Prince, the morning after rain, you
see working men take up manhole covers and lean in beneath
the pavement, dipping buckets into the city's brimming drainage
channels. They use the water to wash cars for pay, and occasionally,
when the day gets hot, you'll see one of them invert a bucket
over his head. This is very dangerous, because any contact
with sewer water invites skin diseases and a mere thimbleful
swallowed can cause bacillary dysentery.
All
over Haiti, you see boys and girls carrying water, balancing
plastic buckets on their heads
as they trek long distances up and down the hillsides of
Port-au-Prince or climb steep footpaths in the countryside.
Many of the water-carriers are orphans, known as restavek--children
who work as indentured servants for poor families. Contaminated
water is one of the causes of Haiti's extemely high rate
of maternal mortality, the main reason there are so many
orphans available for carrying water. "Sanitation service
systems are almost nonexistent," reads one development
report. Many Haitians drink from rivers or polluted wells
or stagnant reservoirs, adding citron, key lime juice, in
the belief that this will make the water safe. The results
are epidemic levels of diseases such as typhoid, and a great
deal of acute and chronic diarrhea, which tends to flourish
among children under 5, especially ones who are malnourished.
Hunger is rampant. "Haitians today are estimated to
be the fourth most undernourished people on earth, after
Eritrea, Ethiopa, and Somalia," the World Bank reported
in 2002. The cures for many waterborne ailments are simple.
But in Haiti, it's estimated (almost certainly overestimated)
that only 60 percent have access even to rudimentary healthcare.
In the countryside, the vast majority have to travel at
least an hour, over paths and main roads that resemble dry
riverbeds, to reach health centers, which not only charge
fees that most can't afford to pay but also lack the most
basic provisions.
Last
winter, I visited the centerpiece of Haiti's public health
system, the University Hospital in Port-au-Prince. It was
founded in 1918, during the time when American Marines occupied
and essentially ran the country. It's a large complex of
concrete buildings in the center of the city, and it seemed
to be open when I arrived. My Haitian guide and I strolled
over toward the pediatric wing. It seemed unnaturally quiet.
No babies crying. Inside, the reason was obvious. There
were no doctors or nurses or patients in sight, only a young
male custodian, who explained that the doctors had recently
ended a strike but that the nurses had now launched one
of their own. Strikes at the hospital are frequent; this
one had to do with current political strife.
"Where
did the sick children go?" I asked my Haitian guide.
"They
went home." She made a face. "To die."
We
walked past rows of empty metal cribs, and then, turning
a corner, down at the end of a long row of old metal beds
with bare, stained mattresses, we saw a lone patient. A
girl lying on her side, very thin in the arms and legs,
with a swollen belly. Her mother, standing beside the bed,
explained that the girl had been sick for a long time. The
doctors said she had typhoid. When the strike began, the
mother and daughter had simply stayed, because the mother
didn't know what else to do. But a doctor did stop in now
and then, and had left behind some pills.
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