For some reason I’ve been really down the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if it’s a case of post-holiday blues, my workload, the weather, or what. But I’ve been depressed and have constantly been beating myself up.
Staring at the images of Haiti, though, I realize how petty I’ve been. Even in the best of times, the people there live in unimaginable poverty. According to Encyclopedia of the Nations:
Most Haitians live in small, often remote, villages or isolated settlements, with no access to electricity, clean water, or social services. Some rudimentary education is offered by church and other charitable organizations, but the distances children must travel to school, the costs of books and uniforms, and the necessity for them to work from an early age means that illiteracy is estimated at over half of the adult population. Illness can often spell financial disaster, as meager savings or investments such as a pig must be sold to pay for medicines. In some areas large numbers of people are dependent on aid agencies for food supplies.
Existence in the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince is perhaps even grimmer, with overcrowding, disease, and squalor widespread. Those who work can expect to earn no more than US$2 a day, hardly enough to buy food, let alone other necessities. The majority, however, must scrape some sort of living from the informal sector. Figures for child mortality, communicable diseases, and life expectancy reveal the country’s poverty and deprivation. According to the Pan-American Health Organization, approximately 380,000 Haitians—over 5 percent of the population—were infected with HIV/AIDS by 2000.
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