Trying to Help in Haiti | Hacker News Reader

Trying to Help in Haiti

outsideonline.com

61 pointsMz30 comments

I'm going to share my experience with HN here. It is a treasured experience, and something I hold near and dear to my heart. I was able to spend 3 months in Haiti as a volunteer. It was supposed to stay for a year. It was after the earthquake and I was stoked to go down.

When I was there I didn't really have any real work to do. They wanted me to create some software but this was the beginning of my "Hacker" career and I was using Access (don't judge). But the thing I really did while I was down there was play with the kids.

That piece of my time down there was more treasured then anything else I have. I got to know the kids so well it was heartbreaking to leave. One of the parents asked me to take his son (who was my pal and Creole teacher) to the US with me.

Just take a moment to think about that. This man loved his son. He took him to work and he was proud of him. You could see it in his eyes. Ose was a GREAT kid, mischievous, but great. His father was willing to sacrifice his time with his son for me to take him. I honestly didn't want to say no.

I built similar relationships with some of the girls at the orphanage. I can still remember the sound of them singing one night. It was the saddest most beautiful song I'd ever heard. 50 orphan girls were singing while beating the rhythm on whatever they had at hand. I don't know the lyrics but that moment was sorrow and happiness.

I had to leave suddenly and wasn't able to make it back, due to riots that closed the airport and running out of savings. When I finally could go back, I decided to go to Bolivia instead, there is a more stable volunteer community there and I could afford it.

I've never regretted something more then not returning to Haiti, but given the choice I'd do it again. I know that in my short time there I was able to make friend and pick up peoples spirits. I know that doesn't seem like a lot, but it was.

I'm still looking for a way to go back and help again, but I just don't know how. I think this sponsorship program sounds like a GREAT idea. This is something so many of the kids down there need.

Have a look at the Colorado Haiti Project. A friend of mine works with them, and says they've been managed to be effective by focusing on one particular area. The leadership and dedication of a few individuals in the local community has been critical as well.

Thank you. I'm looking into it now.

The real question is what would have his life been like without that aid? Perhaps no education, no money for health care. Perhaps even loss of life (or a family member)?

On aside, since it was covered so heavily: I have heard of more than a few people who lose their faith due to church behavior. This seems almost immature thinking to me. If you see a problem with church leadership behavior, and you don't see fault in the beliefs, why not affect change in the church? Ask those tough questions about what money is spent on. This seems far more logical than abandoning faith.

Why is it immature to see people preach one way, behave a separate way, and conclude they're full of shit? It seems a basic requirement of a reasonable human being that people preaching that folks should behave way X comport themselves in way X.

eg the catholic church is, at this point, practically a child rape conspiracy: over and over people in the church discovered what was going on, and over and over they chose to tolerate the behavior to protect the church. Just to pick one notable example, the pope chose not to defrock a priest that molested TWO HUNDRED boys in his care [1], instead squirreling him off to northern wisconsin... where he had more access to children. As their book says, you shall know them by their fruits. This was an act performed by the head of the catholic church.

If you can stomach the acts performed by the church and the totality of the church hierarchy, then still believe what they preach, I'd say you're practically deluded.

[1] http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/26/wisconsin-prie...

> Why is it immature to see people preach one way, behave a separate way, and conclude they're full of shit?

It's not. Concluding that people are unreasonable and summarily dismissing what they preach is what seems immature. One might instead realize that a church and its religion are related but distinct... that although people may not perfectly embody what they preach, the beliefs themselves may be virtuous.

I don't think anyone these days comes to religion as a logical explanation for observed facts. The nonexistence of a personal interventionist god (Clarke's "Alpha") is a couple of lines and Occam's razor; the nonexistence of a universe-creating god (Clarke's "Omega") doesn't even need the couple of lines.

The rationale usually given for religion these days is as a source of moral guidance; the bible may not be literally true, but it's full of wisdom you can apply to your daily life. The Church isn't really about preparing for the second coming of Jesus, but it helps bind the community together; it provides a place you can go for moral advice, a way to direct charitable efforts, shared rituals that help people know each other and so on.

But those matters are things you can judge through observation. If I know christians and atheists, and I observe that the atheists are living more moral lives than the christians, then even on the kind of grounds I've described above, I absolutely should choose to be atheist.

A lack of a belief in God, Atheism, isn't equal to Naturalism, a belief that there is nothing but what is measurable. There is quite a bit of room between the two.

Many early Christians were called Atheists because they denied the existence of other gods. Yet today they (and others) have forgotten the times before they were a dominant world view. True religious imperialists.

atheists don't go around evangelizing, do they?

I believe reasonable people should conclude that when people systemically preach X and behave !X that they, and their beliefs, are addled. Or more likely that they're hucksters. They're using their credibility to sell something, and they have no credibility.

Not to mention the bible, a rorshach of self-contradictory beliefs; christians regularly attempt to avoid standing behind their opinions or condemnation thereof via the "bible says so" ruse, though they're notably happy to lawyer their way out of biblical rules that have fallen out of favor (clothes of two threads, slavery, wife as chattel, homosexuality for some.)

I believe I should not lie. But sometimes I lie. I find this hard. It is a personal struggle, something I meditate on and genuinely try to improve myself. When others lie, I want to say that lying is wrong and simultaneously acknowledge that it's difficult to do the right thing.

I preach X and behave !X. But I don't think I'm a huckster, nor trying to sell anything. I'm just me. I'm not vying for credibility. But I still encourage people not to lie, even though it's hard.

Is there anyone who lives in perfect accordance with their ideals for how people should live?

People turn away from those that Preach "Everyone that does X is evil, and will go to hell," then are found out to be doing "X." Then they claim that they are not going to hell because they are the exception to the rule.

Doesn't even have to be around religion. Rush Limbaugh laughed at the idea that addiction was a 'disease' until it came out that he was an addict. Then all of the sudden it's a disease, with no apology to all of the others that were decried as stupid/wrong/etc over the years.

People don't come to religion through a rational and dispirited analysis of all available evidence. Why would you expect them to hold leaving religion to a higher standard?

Do you have evidence for this? Statistics? I don't think it is wholly irrational to seek community, as we are social animals; I think that people who join religion can do it for community. What irrational reasons do you know of and what percent of people do it for those reasons?

People can rationally join church for community.

People can rationally join religion for community, but only with very sophisiticated metacognition.

Most people slip into religion without a rational basis, but still may appreciate the benefits of their religion post hoc.

Statistics, no. But for evidence, talk to any religious person for 5 minutes about why they're religious.

You're right; it is not irrational to seek community, but believing a religion is correct in order to join a community is.

For irrational reasons, here: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1uvp3i/why_are_or...

The explanations on that page is a cavalcade of cognitive errors. There's plenty more where that came from.

Speaking as someone who's lived through the opposite experience (grew up seeing the wrong thing not believing, found the right thing and believed), I think it comes from the repeated dissonance between reading/being taught one thing, and then not seeing that thing actually lived out. Turns out that when you actually see people practicing what they preach on a large scale, things can turn out quite different!

I can only imagine people don't try and affect change for the same reasons they don't try and affect change in politics at large, namely that the issue seems so large that they can't see themselves making any headway against a seemingly advancing tide.

This is a complex subject, and it reminds me of the science fiction book The Sparrow. Please, no spoilers from the commenters. I remember reading the author saying that one of the premises of the book is that in our relationship with God, [or karma or the unknown or the universe or whatever], many times we create all these causalities that really don't exist. So I'll do this, and then that will happen

I was reminded of this in several parts of the essay, like when people write the kids and tell them just to work hard, and things will work out for them. Or when the author expected that for the money he sent, something better would have happened.

This is almost universally a recipe for terrible letdowns in life.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, we do things because they are the right things to do. The universe is random in many ways and acts in ways we may not easily comprehend. A person chooses to work hard because they believe that working hard has value, and a life spent working at something they value is more precious than one spent passively looking on. A person gives to some charity because they believe that making that choice makes their own life more authentic.

I'm not saying that perhaps there isn't some better way of accomplishing all these important goals of getting out of poverty or helping those in Haiti. I'm saying that we all make personal decisions that demonstrate to others and ourselves the things that we value. That the real story here isn't something along the lines of "I pushed this button, and nothing happened" but more like "I made this decision because these things were important to me"

Or maybe I'm just too much of an existentialist :)

I'm not sure what you're getting at? Sure, we're often trying to do the right thing, but it doesn't invalidate the fact that it's worth it to investigate whether what we do actually works. Otherwise, aren't we just going back to the issue you raised in your first paragraph and invent non-existent cause-to-effect relationships, because we are working under invalid assumptions?

You seem to be implying an either-or choice where one does not exist. Of course we should evaluate the results of our actions. And of course that information should be used next time.

What we can't do is somehow try to add it all up after the fact to figure out if it was worth it or not. At the time we make decisions based on what we know and who we are. It's our embrace of our uncertainty of knowledge yet courage to make what we feel our moral choices anyway that is noble. The author seemed to try to be figuring out if what he did was the right thing or not. That's whacked. Instead, the question is whether, knowing what he did then, he was authentic to who he was.

Let's try this a different way. You could replay the exact same article with three different conclusions. The kid could have escaped poverty and went on to law school. The kid could have been a farce made up by the religious guy. The kid could have spent all the money on drugs. Who cares? If you care about Haiti and the larger situation, it's all anecdotal anyway. If you don't care about the larger situation, then this story is just about the unique and personal experiences each of the participants has. There is no larger story. So all of this other stuff about the macro situation is just a form of projection the author is experiencing while trying to make sense of his own experience. That's fine -- as long as he understands it. But in the end it's just a framing technique.

The personal story was the author trying to figure out if things he had no idea about -- what was actually happening with his money -- were important to the decisions and feelings he had about his own religion during his teen years. It's almost like he was an observer of his own life. There's a strange disconnect.

What was really going on, for both he and the kid, was that they were taking a big piece of fuzzy, unfortunate, and difficult life situation and making hard choices about what to do. The kid stays with his family. He doesn't stand out, stays with the herd. The author still sends money, but is unsure why, except to say that would have been even worse. Then he realizes that he's so involved that he has to know what's been going on. Why the change of heart? I'm not exactly sure. Is he really worried about evangelizing kids? Also, I left the article not really being sure. The most important part of the story, the decisions he made, is the foggiest. He walks right by the most important part of all of this, his own values, and instead waves his hands around at the preacher, the county, the NGO, dumb westerners, and so on. Then he continues to give! It's like he does these things and doesn't know why.

In my mind these choices are where the real story is, not trying to piece it all together into some kind of uber narrative about Haiti (or religious NGOs) in general (which would also be a good story.)

That's an interesting way to look at it. But you seem to be neglecting the emotional angle, and his (somewhat vicarious) connection to the boy. He wanted to know if anything that he imagined was grounded in reality.

I agree that the article is a bit confusing. What was he really thinking? But I got the feeling the author was just as confused. At any rate, I learned some things, and it was pleasantly written, so not a waste of time.

For those interested in learning more about why Haiti is so impoverished, Junot Díaz wrote a great and powerful piece a few years ago in the Boston Review.

"Haiti’s nightmarish vulnerability has to be understood as part of a larger trend of global inequality."

[1]: http://bostonreview.net/junot-diaz-apocalypse-haiti-earthqua...

Maybe the American led coup d'état in 2004[1] has something to do with their misfortunes. Or the CIA involvement in the 1991 coup d'état. Or the occupation by the US in 1915-1934[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Haitian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Haitian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Ha...

The whole paragraph that ends the previous section is, to me, more salient than the quoted sentence itself. Haiti is a microcosm of world iniquity, but it is also a very special hell created by the powers that were (and the powers that be). A better way to state the sentence may be "Haiti’s nightmarish vulnerability has to be understood as [the future] trend of global inequality [for all of us]".

> iniquity,

accidentally relevant typo

> but it is also a very special hell created by the powers that were

not very special, though.. so many improverished/war-torn nations have a similar story with different character names.

Absent mineral resources, the only organizations that could help Haiti in its present state are textile and garment manufacturers. That has been the consistent pattern for the past ~200 years. The author hinted quite strongly where his money went--nice shoes for the kid, and a nice house for the NGO officers.

Bizarre. He's apparently from the country which smashes Haiti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Bertrand_Aristide#Return_t...), yet he's troubled about religious groups. How can such an article be high on "Hacker News", yet there is no serious analysis of why things are as they are? Do "hackers" ignore the context of problems they work on?

Do clueless Brits and Dutchmen fly to countries their governments ravaged, and scratch their heads about such things?

I hear British people say the exact same stuff when the get to the US. It's a pretty standard reaction...

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? That Britain ravaged the US?

Sorry, it was just a joke. I am neither in the party of people who thought that British overlords were that bad nor that they were detrimental. It's more of a joke that we were a former colony and would be an example of the former overlords coming in and pitying the former colonies.

"Oh, these poor people don't have health care provided for them. Wow, these people have pretty dismal public transport. Did you notice all of the police presence with guns? This is probably a pretty dangerous place."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com