18197: Benson: Missions to Haiti

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: LeGrace Benson <legrace@twcny.rr.com>

Re: Several recent posts concerning missions in Haiti:

A secondary theme that treads through many of the postings shows that most
of
us who go to Haiti carry our many surpluses with us: medicine, food,
clothing,
tools, equipment, books, technical skill, good will and good spirits. We
travel
overflowing both materially and intellectually.

In my judgement,  good questions those of us who engage in this process
could
usefully ask ourselves are:  Why is it that I have these abundances that
enable
my generosity and my Haitian freinds do not? Why, after over 100 years of
these
free-will offerings is this cachement pond not overflowing?

I do not suggest any answers here, as I myself am working on finding them.
It
seems that Haiti and Haitians are sometimes viewed and treated as though
it and
they were a large and complex geological object, a thing-in-itself,
separate
and separable from North America, and indeed, from the world system.  Yet
we
recognize that the world system, of which North America and North
Americans are
part, is an ecology. Every part of it affects every other part. The
equation of
giving and receiving is an ecological equation, and it behooves us to see
and
comprehend how the parts relate and interrelate.  In trying to perceive
and
understand that equation, I read the postings on this mail list, I read
many of
the books on Haiti (those by Robert Fatton and Alex Dupuy have been
particularly helpful in their garnering and analysis of facts), above all
I
work at looking and listening to the sights and sounds of Haiti and
Haitians. Sometimes I see, sometimes I am blind. Sometimes I hear,
sometimes I
am deaf.

Since I have no answers I offer the questions.