Haiti is still in Need

Death, poverty, disease and starvation were the topics of the hour when Bonnie Loghry spoke as the next speaker for the Crossing Borders, Building Bridges series on October 13 at 12 noon in room 724. Yet the presentation was not overly morbid instead focusing on the hopes, possibilities and the good that had already been done. Loghry first had to explain the situation to the audience though and that required a good dose of sad information. Loghry, who herself went to Haiti last summer with some of her colleagues to help the people there, began by giving a brief history of Haiti. The small country which is part of an island in the Caribbean was found by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and dubbed Hispaniola or “Little Spain”. It was a slave country until a slave led rebellion, the only successful one in history, freed the country and made it the first black led republic. The country thus began in 1804 and since then due to severe inner turmoil 27 of the 54 leaders it has had have led for less than 1 year. The country is further divided by language, because the rich elite all speak French while the poor masses speak Creole. Massive deforestation has also caused the tropical paradise to suffer severe weather problems that the lost trees could have dealt with such as mudslides. After this intro Loghry turned to the recent disaster of the earthquake; a 7.3 magnitude quake which killed 230,000 people and injured 300,000 more. Loghry showed the audience some slides of the terrible damage but then immediately turned to the positive saying how right after the quake several countries including England, Venezuela, and the U.S rushed to help providing food, medical supplies, temporary shelter, hospitals, money and more. Yuba College even contributed to fundraising for Haiti. However Loghry said there is still much work to be done as 600,000 people in Haiti are living in “tent cities” and many do not have sufficient food or clean water. In addition over 419,000 people have cholera of which only half are hospitalized. Loghry then turned to her trip to Haiti saying what she did with her colleagues to help the people there. The primary work/goal was to educate them in agriculture and animal breeding; specifically rabbits. Rabbits represent their primary food source and income; even their poop is valuable. Loghry also said that the women do all the work in Haiti apologizing to the males in the audience. Loghry showed how the people of Haiti could be and needed to be helped so that they could achieve a sustainable way of providing for themselves. The question any concerned listener would have would be “what can I, one person do”. To this Loghry Introduced a website “Partners in Health” where people can go to help along with a quote from Edward Everett Hale which spoke directly to the audience about their connection to this hard reality: “I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.”