In March 1993, I spent almost three weeks in Haiti with a Christian  Peacemaker Team delegation. Haiti radically changed my life. The recent natural disaster that has plunged so many Haitians into tragedy has once again re-opened my eyes and heart.

Before the recent major earthquake, most Haitian people were living in desperate poverty. I remember walking the blighted narrow streets of Cite Soleil, that massive, crowded, humid slum in Port-Au-Prince. I recall the cognitive dissonance seeing grand mansions perched high up in Petionville surrounded by teeming seas of tin-roofed shanties. My thoughts go back to the Iron Market, a place for vendors to sell goods to an almost nonexistent tourist industry. The Iron Market burned the other day. I visited schools where the children literally had nothing but a rough piece of slate to write upon...and no books whatsoever. Ah the land, so devastated, such a moonscape with total deforestation and resultant erosion.

I worry about Harri, Ron and Carla Bluntschli, Volsi and his young daughter, and so many other generous, courageous, hard working and persevering people I met. “Are they alive?” I ask myself. Even if they live, they suffer for their friends and families.

Someone asked me today what I thought in the long run what would help Haiti?  Of course any response would be complex and multi-faceted. Let me start with this thought, which is a thread, varying only by degree that pertains to Pocahontas County, rural America, the inner city and globally, as well as locally.

Haiti has virtually no middle class. The vast majority of Haitians range from very poor to desperately poor. A few Haitians are very rich, maybe 2% of the population. The middle class of teachers, medical professionals, and business owners comprise about 8%. The balance of the population, about 90%, live in deep poverty. Life is a daily struggle to survive to another day. Contrast this with the United States, with at least half its population in the middle class.

Middle and upper class folks can save money, enroll their children in higher education, plan for their old age. They own property. They can invest in businesses and enterprises. They engage in civic activities, organize community improvement, and safeguard their health. They plan for their futures. They see to it that parks and libraries are built, schools are good and pollution is limited. Impoverished people struggle just to get by day to day. The horizon of their future is this day.

Many Haitians want a future. But without the security of sufficient income, they have no access to higher education, funds to develop a business, or a way to a nice home.

One of the most contentious policy issues that Haiti has wrestled with over the past two decades has been the minimum wage paid to workers in internationally-owned factories making clothing and other items for export in tax-free zones. This past year the Haitian Parliament voted to increase the minimum wage from the equivalent of about $1.75 per day to about $5.50 per day. The president knocked this back to $3 per day under threats from corporations that they would pull their factories out of Haiti. So a worker goes from 25 cents per hour to 38 cents per hour? Imported food, gasoline and other commodities cost about they same as they do here in the United States. The workers cannot get “a leg up,” so to speak, to build themselves a better future.

Destitute people cannot build and sustain a vibrant country. Haitians need an opportunity to make a viable wage to build the infrastructures that enable vibrant community growth.

I think about our public libraries, built by the concerted effort of a large segment of the population, that provide everyone irrespective of their income an opportunity to use a computer, access the internet, read a book or hold a meeting. There are opportunities here in Pocahontas County, blessings to be sure, but a pathway we must work hard at to keep open.