You can't keep wearing your own shoes to know what someone else' feel like

Whenever I have a conversation with someone about Haiti, most generally ask me how the clean up has progressed since the earthquake last year.  I usually answer in the same way paralleling the week I spent in New Orleans with what I have seen in Haiti.  Two years after Hurricane Katrina hit I spent a week in New Orleans with a group from Haslett Community Church, rebuilding houses with Habitat for Humanity.  I had never been to New Orleans before, but the shock of what little had been done in the 2 years that had passed was unimaginable.  We spent the entire week passing by homes that had yet to be cleaned out, spray paint adorned every door step like a secret code a child might use with a friend but instead of an innocent greeting the circle drawing described in shorthand how many people, and how many pets had been found dead or alive inside.  You could still see how high the water had risen by the stains practically painted parallel to the tops of first story windows, and whole neighborhoods still stood vacant, abandoned but not forgotten by so many that had no other choice but to leave everything they ever had behind.  These people who live within the borders of what most say is the greatest country in the world were in my American opinionated standards left to fend for themselves.  Many came to help, but now it has been six years since the greater part of a city drowned, I have not been back to see the progress, but i have to imagine it is not, and will never be the same city again.  

So when people ask me "What is being done in Haiti?  Why has there been no progress?" I just think about how little had been done in New Orleans, a place with every resource at their disposal, and how little the Haitians have to work with, and in my eyes, the positive progress they have made.  It is not unusual to see uninhabitable buildings as you drive the Port au Prince, and I have a feeling as the years come and go I will continue to see these same dilapidated buildings standing as testaments to the Haitian will and perseverance.  Many Haitians lost nearly everything on January 12th,  but without possibility of evacuating their beloved city, they had no choice but to stay and move on in the best ways they could. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mjyJLdlRBA 

here is a link to the 2nd part of a 4 part series created by some CHCH Canadians, and this second part that i have posted explains what i have not been able to in many respects as to why they don't just clean everything up and start rebuilding.  I urge you to watch all four parts of the series, but this was my favorite section, and I think it helps to convey what I have not been successful at.  

I have given a lot of thought to a question someone asked me a while back, and basically someone said to me that they didn't understand WHY these Haitian people didn't just go out and clean up these spots of rubble- even if they weren't getting paid, WHY didn't they just get off their butts and do something to help?  At the time this question was asked I couldn't give an adequate answer to this difficult question that was asked really as more of a statement than an actually question.  But if the person who asked me that question is reading this I would like them to imagine not as themselves - with American values, and American dreams, and American wages, but I want them to imagine themselves as a Haitian- 20 something year old male. He has lived his entire life in the blazing sun, with the average temperatures near the equator at about 85 degrees, and if this man did NOT live in a place like an orphanage that could have provided them with at least 2 meals a day, and a sturdy pair of shoes, he then lived in a concrete shack with a tin roof; or now more likely a tent.  His family lived on less than $2 a day, and the odds of them all eating even once a day were probably pretty low, and on top of all of this, imagine when you are thirsty the water that you drink is probably not even clean enough to sit in my toilet bowl.  So imagine this guy he has no job, no food, and water i wouldn't give to my cat.  Why would I as this man go and pick up heavy concrete blocks that were not mine to begin with, and I was not getting paid to pick up?  And then once I did pick these up,  where would I put these blocks?  They have no place to go, but back on to the pile they originated from. Now I can also relate this to climbing, and I know none of the climbers I know would make it two hours in the Red in August without a indestructible Nalgene bottle full of water, a banana, and Clif Bar - I'm just saying.