9018: Re:9017: Re: 9010: another relief shipment held up in Haitian customs (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JHUDICOURTB@aol.com

I agree with Mr. Nau's point of view concerning the food being sent to Haiti. 
 Yes there is food wasting in the USA, but there is also food wasting in 
Haiti.  As I have traveled in many areas of the country, I have often seen 
that fruit in season just goes to waste.  It is often too expensive to 
transport fruit to markets to when they are in season, and then encounter 
many more merchants selling the same.  Some ladies just leave the fruit to 
rot on the ground at the end of a market day.  Wouldn't it be much better for 
the Haitian people and the environment to take the transportation and customs 
money and build small industries, where fruit could be transformed into 
juice, preserves, and pig food?  Then maybe the farmers would think more 
seriously when they pick up the hatchet to cut down a giant mango tree.  
Many of the bleeding  heart missionary approaches to helping Haiti make no 
sense for Haiti.  Why fly 50 American youths down at $500 -$1000 cost each to 
build a church or a school?  That money would be much better used in the 
hands of a Haitian mason.  All of this is just that the American youths want 
to feel their salvation by going down there and "suffering" with the people.  
Most of those church groups have members who are experts in one field or 
another.  Only those people are needed in Haiti.  Why not help with organic 
agricultural practice, reforestation, transformation of agricultural 
products, alternative energy development, sanitary practices.  The Haitian 
people are starting to feel like they are animals in a zoo.  Foreigners come 
to see poverty and be saved by doing something about it.  There is a Band-Aid 
approach to development.  That is the only thing going on now and it will not 
work.  I think that instead of sending their youth to go down there to feel 
good about themselves because they spend a week with the poor people, the 
American Churches involved with Haiti should form a federation to do some 
integral work in one specific area of Haiti.   Unskilled labor is the least 
needed of all down there.  One week engagements should be eliminated unless 
they are to offer extremely specialized work within a developped plan.  Haiti 
needs help but the help it needs is not the kind it is receiving.  Those food 
donations and group missions do not make any sense and are damaging to Haiti. 
 They create a sick relationship between the donor and the receiver.