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Haiti’s Problems Rooted In Poverty And Dysfunctional Governance…

I was shocked to learn that anoth­er earth­quake had hit Haiti ear­ly Saturday morn­ing. My first thought was, Oh my God, not again; how much more can these poor peo­ple take?
Throughout the day Saturday, I stayed glued to the news hop­ing that there would be no loss of life. As the day pro­gressed and the death toll start­ed com­ing in, I remind­ed myself that pray­ing for some­thing not to hap­pen after they had already hap­pened was a sure-fire way not to have your prayers answered. As that thought ran through my mind, I prayed a quick prayer that there would be no loss of life.
By Sunday evening, I believe the full extent of what occurred in Haiti began dawn­ing on the rest of the world; news report­ing agen­cies report­ed that 1’300 peo­ple were con­firmed dead and many more miss­ing. The Haitian peo­ple were again fac­ing a tragedy as they did just over a decade ago, when a mas­sive earth­quake hit, killing hun­dreds of thou­sands, injur­ing untold num­bers, and leav­ing the cap­i­tal of Port-au-Prince almost leveled.

Reuters new Agency reports that Haitian author­i­ties say the quake reduced church­es, hotels, schools, and homes to rub­ble in the lat­est tragedy to hit the impov­er­ished Caribbean nation.
The 7.2‑magnitude quake, fol­lowed by a series of after­shocks, struck 8 km (5 miles) from Petit Trou de Nippes, about 150 km west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 10 km, the United States Geological Survey said. That made the tremors felt as far away as Cuba and Jamaica, poten­tial­ly more severe than the mag­ni­tude 7 earth­quake 11 years ago that killed tens of thou­sands on the island.
As we are once again thrust into mourn­ing for our broth­ers and sis­ters in Haiti, we must remain focused on some of the root caus­es of the Haitian peo­ple’s plight.

As a per­son who has deep beliefs in a high­er pow­er, I have no fear that any human being may ridicule me for my beliefs in a Sovereign God.
Nevertheless, as I some­times pon­der whether it is pos­si­ble that idol­a­try could cause us divine reper­cus­sions, I bal­ance those thoughts against the idea that no sin is greater than the other.
So if God was pun­ish­ing Haiti for idol wor­ship, why would he not pun­ish.…… say Jamaica for its wan­ton dis­re­gard for human life?
Haiti sits on sev­er­al tec­ton­ic fault lines, mean­ing it is earthquake-prone.
It is not the earth­quakes that are killing Haitians; it is that the poor­ly con­struct­ed cin­der-block build­ings are killing peo­ple when the earth­quakes occur, which they do with fre­quen­cy in Haiti, like fires in California, hur­ri­canes in Florida, snow­storms in New England, or Tornadoes in Oklahoma.
Haiti needs a gov­ern­ment that begins the hard task of insti­tut­ing basic build­ing stan­dards, like Jamaica did after so many homes lost their rooves dur­ing hur­ri­cane Gilbert in 88.
Let us begin there, and we will begin to see a reduc­tion of earth­quake deaths in Haiti.….…Haitians are not cursed; they are not salt; they are not con­demned. What they are suf­fer­ing from is a result of pover­ty and poor governance.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.