Murbarak leaves Egypt

Presidenital Palace
Port au Prince Haiti

In 1979 as quality control coordinator for a toy factory, I was sent to Port au Prince, Haiti to consult with the owner of the company  that we contracted with to assemble our products under Item 807 of the U. S. Tarrif Codes.

I was there for three days during which my hosts, Renee and Marilyn Chauvet drove me up the mountain to see how the elite live and then through the poorest of the poor areas to see the stark shocking contrast. Downtown I saw the Presidential Palace and the Catholic Cathedral built in the 1600s that still stood but no longer used due to safety concerns.

It was astonishing to see the opulence that Baby Doc Duvilier lived in at the Presidential Palace surrounded by armed tanks and soldiers wearing crisscrossed bullet belts.  Armed guards also stood outside gas stations and on street corners, along the road side - they seemed to be everywhere.  The experiences of that trip have always remained potent in so many ways. 

I returned for seven days in 1998 as part of a mission trip.  On this trip, I went into the slum of Cite Soliet,  a city inside a city built with funds from the World Bank - and without any infrastructure to support that city - no electricity, water, sewer!  I watched as children went to the tanker truck to get water - five gallons per family per day.  Period.  The kids and women put the pails on their heads and headed for home.

There are no public schools in Haiti - education remains a privilege not a right.  We visited Mother Theresa's hospice for infants with AIDS and another for children and adults and a "nursing home" outside the city run by a community of women religious from The Netherlands who provided care to children born with deformitites and a very few lucky elders. In the 19 years since I had visited Haiti, it had also become a city subsummed in air and ground polution with billboards for Nike and 7-UP and Pepsi and Coke and Ford and Chevrolet along the streets lined with discarded plastic bottles, soda cans and plastice bags.

These two trips brought me face to face with evil of dictators and globalization.   

Today as Eyptian President Mubarak fled after his country rose up after 30 years of his dictatorship, my thoughts went right back to Haiti, to the ruthless dictator Baby Doc was, the horrendous poverty and violence the people of Haiti were subjected to under his reign of terror. 

Unlike Baby Doc's exit in the 1980's when he fled with millions of dollars to continue living a lavish life, today Swiss banks immediately froze the assets of exiled Egyptian President Mubarak.  Today I pray that the people of Egypt will be able to rebound and create a healthy society.  The courage of the people in Egypt, their unswerving determination to stand firm provides hope for us all.

May the people of  Egypt rise from the ashes as the Phoenix rose ... may Haiti find justice ... as Mother Theresa said - it is not that we don't have enough resources for the people of the world - it is just that those of us who have so much share so little... ... ...