Haiti

I am very embarrassed to be writing about Haiti so late, unfortunately real time demands in my life could not wait. Forgive me.

That being said, I want to offer my prayers to the survivors of that devastating earthquake. The Haitian people suffer daily from bone crushing poverty. I can scarcely imagine what things must be like now with their ineffective government in shambles.

My father and his family emigrated from Haiti to America when he was but a boy of 7 years old. My father never really spoke much of his days growing up in Haiti, but when he did, he often spoke in terms of a desperate need to leave. It was always a wish of mine to go to Haiti with my father, so that he could show me his boyhood home. Alas, that is not to be, my father and I share somewhat of a strained relationship.  Perhaps someday one of us will be big enough to patch things up so that we can make the trip together.

As I listen to Obama make America’s pledge to help the Haitian people, I cannot help but wonder what will happen to places like Haiti when America’s burden is so great it can no longer offer real assistance. Whenever tragedies like this strike in the third world, I listen to the small offers being made by the other G20 nations. They are more like tokens of support than real assistance. It is always America’s aid that really does the job. But what is to happen when America’s aid is squeezed down to the size of those other nations, because we have so foolishly indebted ourselves? Who will be the hope for these unfortunate people? Will the new leader of the world give as generously, as willingly or as freely as we Americans do?

Helping the world in times of need is just one of those things we stand to loose when we allow our government to foolish gamble away our children’s future. So tonight, I shall pray for Haiti, the homeland of my father, and I shall pray for America his new chosen home.