Three Years Later

Today, January 12^th, marks the three-year anniversary of the earthquake that demolished much of Haiti’s infrastructure and devastated the entire country. This is also the day that I am returning to Haiti to complete the vocational school I set out to complete last June. Fortunately for me, there was nothing earth shattering (no pun intended) that happened today and I got up to the La Croix Mission without a scratch.

The earthquake that hit Haiti holds the same cultural significance for Haitians as September 11^th does for Americans. Though these two events are different in nature, they are moments in each nation’s history that its people can never forget. The earthquake forever changed Haiti in every way possible. Not only did it destroy Port Au Prince, (Haiti’s capital) but killed over three hundred thousand people it left over 1 million people homeless, over 10% of Haiti’s population. 

As I drove up to La Croix from Port Au Prince the damage from the quake was as clear as I’ve ever seen it. There are still massive tent cities sprawled all around the outskirts of Port Au Prince and all throughout the highway there is rubble lining the road from crumbled buildings that fell during the earth quake. There has been some progress made in the past three years, and President Martelli’s push for investment in infrastructure and vocational education is apart of that progress, but the long road to recovery is a long one. The devastation seen from Highway One shows the vast amount of work that has yet to be done. I am fortunate to be living in the rural areas, which did not have as much damage from the earthquake as the urban areas, but the economic and social effects of the earthquake radically changed the entire landscape of the nation, for both rural and urban.

There are many reasons why Haiti has not rebounded from the earthquake three years ago, and I will discuss those in later posts, but for now I will just leave you with one thought. Haiti was in a pretty bad place before the earthquake hit. The earthquake hit, and then Haiti hit a new low. There were billions of dollars sunk into the recovery effort, some went directly to the up front aid, like tents for homeless Haitians, while other funds went to long-term projects like education and infrastructure. These long-term projects won’t have an immediate pay off, but will add much greater value in the future. An estimated one half of all US households donated to the recovery effort in some way, but much of that money went towards long term projects rather than immediate aid. I know that everyone who donated to Haiti through Westminster Presbyterian donated to the La Croix mission, and money was invested in long term projects, specifically education. Right now there is much criticism that the aid sent to Haiti was “dead aid” and it only exacerbated the problems in Haiti rather than help the Haitians. There are some instances where this is true, but there are other instances where money was put to productive uses who’s pay off will be in later years because it went to fix some of Haiti’s more fundamental problems.

Haiti is still suffering from setbacks created by the earthquake three years ago. All I can hope for Haiti, is that the money put towards the long term relief, the money that wasn’t spent to on tents but used to build schools, will create a citizenry that is more prepared for the next earthquake. As for now all we can do is pray, wait, and see.