Doomsday Survival Kit-Lessons We Can Learn From Haiti

As of this writing Haiti has gone through a lot of trials and tribulations in the past few weeks. The world and the people of Haiti have endured the earthquake which tore the country apart. If an individual can learn anything from the Haiti situation is that it takes years to prepare for a disaster and seconds for everything to be torn asunder.

In the case of Haiti because they had very little infrastructure due to lack of money and years of mismanagement, it was difficult to transport supplies by air because the Airport only had one runway for the airplane-this situation probably caused death to thousands. People in developed nations may think they are immune to glitches like that where there is no infrastructure, but don't count your chickens before they hatch.

I have lived through three Electricity Outages in the most developed area in the world-New York City. The first time was in 1965 when people believed in their prayer book instead of their pocket books, the second was in 1977 when people were grooving and fool enough to go stealing in stores, and alas-the 2003 outage where people in the city were still shell shocked from 911. Thus, just because you live in a high end country doesn't mean that you're immune to a breakdown in the infrastructure.

And some have been barking and questioning why we should be helping an impoverished country whose government has been corrupt for decades if not centuries. However, one must look at the history of the country before  rushing to any judgement about it. Haiti was a territory ruled by the French on the Island of Hispaniola. When Spain and later France came to the island the native Taino Indians were shoved aside and treated like dogs until they withered on vine . Then when France got rights to the island after settling a dispute with Spain they continued importing Africans to the Island and made them slaves to do unpaid work. The Africans revolted against France and became a free, independent, nation in 1804 and in the process became the only slaves to ever revolt against their owners ,win and start a nation-not even the famous ancient Spartacus accomplished this.

However,  because the western hemisphere was mired in the slave trade during the 19th century Haiti's achievement was condemned by the community of nations and as a result the nation was shunned. Its independence  probably was very vexing  to the US because slavery was legal in that country and it too isolated the nation along with the rest of the world. France levied a tax against the nation for breaking free from it and along with  being ostracized by  the community of nations ,  Haiti didn't have a leg to stand on.

In the 20th century the US occupied Haiti from 1919-1934, then began a steady stream of dictators from the ranks of the Haitian people. There was a song from long ago which said" Freedom isn't free, you have to sacrifice, you have to pay the price for your liberty." Ironically, Haiti has paid double time. Haiti didn't become blighted overnight and let's not point fingers at anyone, but it seems that everyone has had their hand in the cookie jar except the majority of Haitian people.

The years that Haiti was shunned by the community of nations stunted its growth, plus colonization in the 20th century by a super power, despotism, nepotism only made matters worse for a people that lived the ideals of freedom and alas Spartacus Hence, let the community of nations help this nation of free minded people and stop barking about why anybody should do it. Many things over the years played a role in Haiti's lack of development and all these movers and shakers had their sticky fingers in the cookie jar stealing like it was a birthright