21852: Esser Re: 21801: Walton: RE: 21791: Laleau: Re: 21768... (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

People move to the city in the hopes of escaping hunger, poverty,
lack of healthcare, lack of land, lack of decent housing and lack of
schools. Haiti isn't alone in that regard, even in the U.S. many
rural areas slowly depopulate because it is rather difficult to make
a decent living there and definetely impossible to get a good
education or find work upon returning. And yes the same (market)
forces drive this process. Once people move to the city they often
couldn't move back, even if they wanted to, because they might even
lack the funds to travel or do not have a support system that could
help them to establish themselves in the countryside. For example: if
you are desperately poor, upon arriving in the provinces you wouldn't
have shelter nor land to live on. I once met deportees from the
Dominican Republic in Wanament, that were simply stranded there for
years because their previous place of employment had been the D.R.,
they had no place to go to and no money to travel either. When you
speak of poverty so deep that you can't even eat every day, the
smallest things (in our eyes)  can be logistically very challenging.

  Robert Walton wrote:

One wonders why unemployed, starving city dwellers do not emigrate to
the
country where they can be fed. -- but that's another topic.