HAITI: A NATION CURSED, TORTURED AND TORMENTED?

"Slowly, strongly and for very long seconds the earth shook in Haiti on 14 August, 2021 around 8:30 am"; and in its aftermath, 304 people perished and 1,800 others were injured, and several buildings including hospitals and churches were damaged and destroyed. 

ICHEOKU says this was how a commentator described the latest earthquake to hit Haiti barely one month after President Jovenel Moise was assassinated inside his own bedroom in his own home in Port-au-Prince. So, how much can any nation really take and absorb being hounded by so many forces, including Mother Nature and some Western nations which are still punishing it for daring to declare their independence from France and humiliatingly defeating the French army. 

Haven't Haiti suffered enough already that the Western countries should have some compassion on them and help them to, in fact, finally and truly get on their feet. It is not about getting "back" on their feet because they were never on their feet; it is about making it possible for them to at last finally get on their feet standing. Even resettling them somewhere should also be an actionable option as Canada is under populated and America still have so many swaths of uninhabited lands. Better still, if only African countries had their acts together, resettling Haitians in motherland African continent would have been the best possible solution to their never ending back to back catastrophes which continues to plague the Caribbean Island nation. 

They did not ask to be taken out of Africa forcibly and dumped in their present location 400 years ago when slavery was abolished, but it is the hand which fate had dealt them. But it is a fixable problem which resettlement can solve if only there is the will to do so. Although some of them might buck at such an offer, but at least let those willing to be relocated be moved out of the Island and in that way help have a permanent fix to the recurring disasters which have rendered the country nearly paralyzed and completely dysfunctional. It was only in 2010 that a devastating earthquake struck the country, killed 300,000 people, injured 250,000 more, destroyed nearly all the meagre infrastructures. They are still suffering the effect as funds raised to help them rebuild met some unsavory end in the hands of the Clintons who were appointed to supervise it. 

They are reeling from that 2010 earthquake and other disastrous hurricanes when their president was assassinated last July 7th, 2021 and now a little over one month later, August 14, 2021, the Island nation has once again been pulverized by a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake. An earthquake stronger than the 2010 but which have so far killed only about 10% of the casualty figure of 2010 as more bodies are likely to be unearthed underneath the rubbles. From the Haitian government update, 304 bodies have been recovered with many more feared still buried and trapped underneath the rubbles; 1,800 people sustained all manners of injuries, many buildings including hospital, churches, hotels and homes were damaged and destroyed as well.

ICHEOKU says it is about time a constructive solution is found to mitigate the recurring decimal that is Haiti on its back, lying prostrate, with no hope of ever attaining greatness because each time they try to get up, one disaster always comes calling to abort whatever effort that was being made to stand the country up on its two feet. Even their presidential palace which was damaged in the 2010 earthquake and later demolished has not yet been rebuilt, eleven long years after. It was most likely for this reason, that the killers of President Jovenel Moise easily had their way penetrating his private home in Port-au-Prince. It would not have been that easy killing a president inside a presidential palace except it was a palace coup carried out by the same presidential security guard charged with his protection details. 

Be that as it may, the usual sloganeering which always follows disasters in Haiti is no longer enough. It cannot remain the usual refrain of "recovering as many survivors as possible" and "helping Haiti to rebuild", because it never happens and once the news cameras are turned out, such promises go out the window. Haiti's life by its nature is forever "a challenging time" and has remained so throughout its existence. Therefore the usual handouts is no longer sufficient in addressing the Haitian problem. Even their ancestors' blood being strong to keep them rising right back up following every disaster is equally no longer enough. More needs to be done towards finding a lasting solution to the Haiti's problems. In some cultures, divinities and oracles would have been consulted to see what curse Haiti is under as not even their co-island neighbor, Dominican Republic, sees anything near half the problems of Haiti. 

Something needs to be done about Haiti because the country has suffered enough and needs to be helped. Please dear God, if the people of Haiti did something terribly wrong before thine eyes or are being punished for the iniquities of their forebears to the third generation, show them mercy and forgive them for they have suffered enough. To our Haitian brethren and friends, our prayers are with you as you face yet again another disastrous wrath of Mother Nature, an unwanted gift which keeps on giving bountifully. If only America could invest even half of the resources it spends in "building nations" in far away countries, thousands of miles away from the American Western Hemisphere, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, in its "backyard", Haiti will not be in such dire strait it is in. The rickety structures in the Island not built to standards also does not help matters when earthquakes and hurricanes strike. 

But regardless, a country already supine can only get more desolate with each disaster pelting it, making it impossible for it to ever get up. Unfortunately, Haiti's black lives does not seem to matter either to BLM or Western powers, particularly the United States of America, which does not pay as much attention to the countries in its immediate backyard of the Caribbean as it expends thousands of miles away. It is about time America started worrying more about countries in its neck of the wood and help them stabilize fully. Imagine what the $700 million spent on the soon to be abandoned Kabul building could have done in Haiti. But no, Haiti does not matter and if at all, not enough to be worthy of such an investment despite that charity is supposed to begin from home; and the Caribbean is nearer home to America than Kabul or Baghdad. It should not be only when a country "sponsors, harbors and trains" terrorists that they should matter and deserving of some "nation building".

It is sad how that Caribbean Island nation of Haiti has been treated or rather neglected by successive United States of American governments, American companies and the general American business community. Imagine how many Haitians who will be fully gainfully employed if all the American companies shipping jobs overseas to China and India had redirected their offshoring activities into Haiti. Imagine the transformation that would have been seen in Haiti if the American government decided to do some real "nation building" in Haiti as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Haiti deserves better and if they are intentionally being blackballed for disgracing the French army, it is time to let the past lie in the past where they belong. America should lift the discrete sanction against Haiti and treat them as a neighbor and member of the Western Hemisphere under America's supreme control. May the souls of the Haitians' earthquake dead now rest.