When I was six, my parents put me in footed pajamas that were cozy and warm. Then they took turns reading me a short bedtime story so that I could have sweet, interesting dreams. Afterwords, they kissed me, tucked the bedding around me and told me that they were going to awaken me in a few hours to listen to a man and his wife who would be visiting our home.
A few hours later, my father carried me into the living room and introduced me to Paul Magloire and his wife, Yolette Leconte. They both were brought to my parents by Quaker friends of my parents, who I already knew. I politely shook hands and sat down on the sofa to listen as had been instructed when I went to bed.
Here is who Paul was (excerpted):
During his rule Haiti became a favorite tourist spot for American and European tourists. His anti-communist position also gained favorable reception from the US government. In addition, he used revenues from the sale of coffee to repair towns, build roads, public buildings and a dam. He also oversaw the institution of women’s suffrage. Magloire was very fond of a vivid social life, staging numerous parties, social events and ceremonies.
In 1954, when Hurricane Hazel ravaged Haiti and relief funds were stolen, Magloire’s popularity fell. In 1956 there was a dispute about when his presidency would end; he fled the country amid strikes and demonstrations. When François Duvalier took the presidency, he stripped Magloire of his Haitian citizenship. – From Paul Magloire – Wikipedia
First off, he did not steal the money, nor did his wife. They were trying to improve Haiti.
Secondarily, he and his wife were kept in separate crouch cages for around a month out in the open air until enough money was gathered for some guards to be bribed to set them free after which a flight had been arranged for them to come to NY, USA.
Thirdly, they were being hidden so that they would not be killed or extradited back to Haiti . In addition, some sort of a way to provide them with income from work was being devised. This is where my parents and the other Quakers were of value. They were collectively figuring out ways and hosting the couple.
Now it makes me dismayed and irate that any country, although especially Haiti, would be called a “shi#hole country.” You can see some of the actualities herein: #ShitHoleDon Captures Disgust After Trump’s Racist “Shithole Countries” Remark – Jon Queally
Now why do lots of people in Haiti eat mud cookies? Why do they eat mud to get rid of hunger pangs? Why do many Haitian people, including little children, work and live in garbage dumps trying to find ways to recycle products that they sell found in dumps? Many, who live in the dumps, don’t even have homes, but just sleep out in the open. How come they don’t have money and jobs, such as from farming the land in Haiti?
Here is part of the reason. The USA government loaned money to Haiti for social and economic development, but only under the condition that Haiti also accept surplus food products like rice from the USA, which effectively put farmers in Haiti out of business.
Video Report
A look at how the stories of politics, rice, and the United States are deeply interwoven. Twenty years ago, Haiti produced enough rice to feed its population. Importing rice from other countries like the US was unheard of. Today, the country of less than 10 million people is the third largest importer of US rice in the world – 75 per cent of the rice eaten in Haiti is shipped in from the US. Click to view
Then the US government, using some sort of law regarding swine virus or something else, got rid of the robust little creole pig (sometimes the only source for protein), which ate just about anything, and replaced it with American hogs that died of in Haiti due to the high temperature, lack of certain immunities, need for specialized expensive diets and so on. However, American farmers made lots of money from that next experiment to get money loaned to Haiti back into the USA (i.e., in pig sales), and of course selling the agricultural products once the vegetable and fruit farmers were put out of business there.
To add insult to injury, here’s what happens much of the time. You see, many people in the USA are generous, kind and sympathetic people. We like helping others with troubles.
This is the reason that we make clothing drives, food banks, homeless shelters, and donations of supplies and money to go into places like Puerto Rico and Haiti, etc., after hurricanes, earthquakes, wild fires and more.
We do not like suffering and we like people to thrive.
Especially it is hard for lower middle class and poor families to do it, but many of them give and give again out of my country.
Then where does much of the money go? Back to the comment: To add insult to injury, here’s what happens much of the time. Frankly, it does not fund many of the people for whom it is intended much of the time.
Excerpted from: Haitians are urging people not to give money to American Red Cross …:
As the death count after Hurricane Matthew approaches 900 and reports of deadly cholera outbreaks begin to surface, Haitians have sent out desperate pleas for help. … Yet accompanying many requests for aid comes a warning – do not give your money to the American Red Cross (ARC).
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Trust in the ARC, and in foreign aid more widely, has been badly shaken by a 2015 report that found donations had been squandered.
Despite collecting nearly half a billion dollars to provide relief after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and pledging to build 700 permanent homes, the ARC has been accused of only building six.
“In the coming days, many of you are going to write and ask me how you can ‘help Haiti’,” one woman said on Twitter after the hurricane, “Do not give to the American Red Cross.”
The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund is Lying to You | HuffPost
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/crossover…/the-clinton-bush-haiti-fu_b_778503.htm...
There are no Haitians on the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund’s board of directors. “The best way concerned citizens can help is to donate funds…” This is BS, too. Not only because the fund in question is lying and not spending its money on relief efforts. “Concerned citizens” can be informed by serious journalism, the kind major …
Chelsea Clinton rebuked for Trump attack: ‘Haiti helped pay for your …
www.wnd.com/…/chelsea-clinton-rebuked-for-trump-attack-haiti-helped-pay-for-you...
6 hours ago – Twitter users quickly pointed out that the Clintons‘ organization, the Clinton Foundation, reportedly scammed Haiti out of recovery donations after its horrific 2010 earthquake and, in that same year, was said to have paid for Chelsea’s $3 million luxurious wedding to Marc Mevinsky on July 31, 2010.
The last time that my parents were in Haiti before their deaths, they were in a taxi going to some market and saw a young man, around eighteen years old, yelling at a man in his seventies while the elder was changing a tire. The elder was in a chauffeur’s uniform and the younger one was swearing at him to hurry up while not even helping.
My father, then, ordered his taxi over, got out and said, “How dare you talk to any other person like that? Who do you think you are? Where are your manners? I need to talk to your father. You need straightening out to be a better human.”
The young man, shocked, told my father that his father was one of the top diplomats in Haiti. So my parents chose to drive to the father’s home instead of the market that day.
The father was grateful to my own father for correcting his son and said that he was difficult and rude ever since he was a little boy. He also arranged for my parents to come to dinner so that they both could talk to the arrogant son about changing into becoming a better person.
Yet back to the main gist: The fact is there is no sh#thole country. There are only certain people who act awfully. If there is blame to be placed on some country like Haiti, then the finger of the USA government, major US corporations that destroy a country’s rice industry and substitute hogs for creole pigs, and corrupt charitable foundations needs to point right straight back at self. Let’s have a mea culpa moment for some of the misguided creeps of the world.
In the end the choice is simple. People are supposed to aid and assist others, and whole societies if they can do so in the ways that my parents tried to help particular Haitians, including many more than just Paul Magloire, his wife Yolette Leconte and the young swearing man by the road.
At the same time, people are not supposed to raid other countries, nor force them into poverty and dependence on your country’s agricultural and animal products. Especially people have no right to blame them (victims) for their dire conditions when the profit motive that their own country supported was largely responsible for the misery that others (the victims) have to endure, such as only being able to afford mud cookies as the main dietary staple for survival.
Instead, we have to be so clever and resourceful to stop these horrid organizations and individuals from raiding whole societies and ruining many lives. And it can be done.
It is heartening to know this is so and you may like to see some of the techniques. You can see about them here by viewing this highly recommended, uplifting film. It brings sheer joy!
A United Kingdom Trailer 2016 – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq37sPQzqFI
Sep 13, 2016 – Uploaded by CallMe Zubair
Trailer for A United Kingdom. Starring David Oyelowo (Selma) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl); and directed …
BBC – A United Kingdom – BBC Films
www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/film/a_united_kingdom
A UNITED KINGDOM tells the inspiring true story of Seretse Khama, the King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments. Seretse and Ruth defied family, Apartheid and …
A United Kingdom – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_United_Kingdom
A United Kingdom is a 2016 British biographical romantic drama film directed by Amma Asante and written by Guy Hibbert, based on the true-life romance between Sir Seretse Khama and his wife Ruth Williams Khama. David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike portray Seretse and Ruth, respectively. It was screened at the 2016 …
Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA.