a258: Re: a254: Documenting misery (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Benjamin J. Hebblethwaite <bhebblet@indiana.edu>

Dear Corbett readers,

Garbage is all-pervasive in Port-au-Prince.

Does anyone know about the politics behind not collecting garbage?
Haitians often told me that it is a type of "lobby."

What's the deal with all the throwing of empty plastic bottles out the
windows of taptaps?  Is it a kind of self-loathing turned defeatism?

Has anyone heard anything more about the Cuban government's complaint to
the Haitian government about all the plastic jina bottles washing up onto
their shores?

I'll never forget the day I hung out at a seaside spot in Carrefour and
watched stick-like children swimming in the nude while a father holding
his child's hand sorted through an enormous mound of garbage for a bite to
eat.  They say that 1/5 of humanity is on the verge of such existence.

So many question.  Like why the USA produces energy garbage that remains
dangerously radioactive for 200,000 years.  Talk about living on the
brink.

Ben H.