Chez-roullete

Today was an absolutely wonderful day.
I met up with a friend of mine, Angela Galbreath, from Sewanee who works for the Episcopal diocese of Haiti in Port-Au-Prince. We went to mass at the cathedral (where I got to meet Bishop Durrison), ate a delicious steak lunch, saw some sites including the local Episcopal university (where I got to see Dixon and Annwn's old van!...see photo below), and went to a the St. Vincent House, a house for the blind, deaf, and disabled. There I met a Haitian man named Ronnie who is bound to a wheel chair (chez roulette) who we somehow had a shared friend (Seth Olsen). We talked about basketball (Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Lebron James) and we taught each other english and Creole respectively. After our visit to St. Vincent, I was able to meet a true life "Rastafarian for life, that's da truf man", Bombo, who is a friend of Angela's.
The whole day ended over a few Prestiges (Haitian beer) at the rectory of St. Simeons where I learned dirty Creole slang from some of the teenagers.

Me with Dixon's old Minivan...certainly a small world

Seeing Port-au-Prince reassured me that there is indeed some hope for Haiti. They might be 154 out of 174 on the UN's Human Development Index, but there are very many people who care very deeply about their country and want to change it. And even more, I am beginning to realize that perhaps the biggest foe of this wonderful nation is its biggest supporter, the US. They might give them billions in aid, but they also control all of the politics. If they don't want a person in power, they physically remove him (Aristide was removed from his office at Parliament physically by US Marines and put on a plane to Panama all in one afternoon).
Some believe that the US wants to control the nation because there are untapped reserves of gold or oil. I don't know if I believe that, but something seems very fishy about the way the US has so many hands in this country's politics. They won't allow for dual citizenship (thus not allowing highly educated, wealthy Haitians on the Diaspora to vote or pay taxes). They won't issue travel visas to Haitians to travel ANYWHERE (including the Dominican Republic) unless they have extensive letters of recommendation.

America has crippled this nation. They control everything about it. And they say that they help by sending millions of dollars in USAid (which you see their tents everywhere), installing UN police (highly funded by the US), and the thousands of NGO workers who are trying desperately to improve the health, education, and livelihoods of million of people. And yet, ask any Haitian or outsider and they will all say that Haiti is worse off now than 20 years ago.
Why?
We have paralyzed them. And instead of trying to rehabilitate their injury, we have essentially led them to believe ever more that they are a victim...a victim of God's wrath, a victim of dictators who had malintentions, a victim of a colonial system which was doomed to fail centuries ago.
The Haitian people want to stand up. And there are many who are trying. Pere Val and Carmel are trying to stand. And they need help. And these many mission teams from Virginia, NC, SC, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee are helping them achieve this. But they need more. They need people to support their struggling economy. All Americans need to make Haiti a tourist destination. All Americans need to buy haitian products. American companies need to be bold and place factories here. A polarized government that can't even effectively run its own country certainly can't run a failing state like Haiti. We, free Americans, need to circumvent our government's failed attempts and help Haiti, through the ever-powerful dollar and the ever-loving God.

"Sak Pase Seth!"-Ronnie