Despite government efforts to address the problems plaguing Haiti’s import economy, this article describes the severe failures in the supply chain. Since Cap-Haitien is where we purchase our supplies, we have experienced the shortages and high prices firsthand. From our observation, corruption still flows very freely through the bureaucracy. Pam saw vendors selling the dirt cookies in the market on Saturday where we live in Pignon.
When people in abject poverty face difficult decisions, good options seldom exist—the choices are simply bad or worse. When a mother has more children than she can feed, where does she find help? In Haiti, there is a culturally acceptable and clandestine child-trafficking arrangement resulting from these difficult decisions and those who prop-up and benefit from the structural evils that force these decisions in the first place.
Restaveks: 300,000 child-slaves blend into the landscape here. They are visible only by understanding what to look for—most foreigners do not. Conversely, tens-of-thousands of families in Haiti rationalize this form of trafficking by promising food, shelter, and education in return for household help. Unfortunately, in too many instances these arrangements fall victim to human depravity, and children are exploited.
The following video was produced by Compassion UK:
The Massacre, Libon, Artibonite, and Pedernales rivers serve as the border between much of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. They also draw the dividing lines between many unfortunate realities.
top photo: Cobb, Charles E. 1987. “Haiti: Against All Odds.” National Geographic, Vol. 172, No. 5: 645-670. Photo by James Blair
bottom image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center - Scientific Visualization Studio
The following letter was mailed to our family and friends in December. Since then we have received a considerable amount of positive feedback and felt it appropriate to post online.
December 4th, 2007
Dear Family and Friends,
There’s a story about two farmers who desperately needed rain. Both of them prayed for rain, but only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive it. Which one trusted God to send the rain? God will send the rain when he’s ready. We must prepare our fields to receive it. (more…)
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