The Haiti Experience

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The Haiti Experience: This is going to be an attempt to put into words the experience of Haiti. It is a very difficult thing to put into words, because before actually being there, no picture or video clip could put into perspective the daily horrors the people of Haiti face. I am going to put this into a chronological order of events to try to stay on track, because each new encounter brought up more questions. It was so overwhelming, I believe this is the best format for me to use to help you understand how stark the differences are and how many things we take for granted. This journey peeled away many of the conceptions I had about what poverty was and exposed a very raw view of humanity. The fact that this kind of suffering exists in a world that has so much money is unconceivable to me. It was one of the most heartbreaking realities of this trip. We flew from Manchester to Miami, Florida where we met up with the other groups that were going on this wave of workers. There were so many different professions within the group, engineers, builders, medical workers, and humanitarian aid workers. They were from all over the country and many of them were leaving their own practices to go help people they did not even know, this was the hopeful and happy feeling I was hoping to carry throughout the trip, unfortunately, this was the last time I would feel happy again. The flight was smooth, but took on a surreal nature as we approached the Island of Hispaniola. The Dominican Republic and Haiti share this small Island, divided between them pretty much down the middle. On the Dominican side there is rainforest and beautiful beaches with roads and hotels and resorts, it is a lush paradise. On the Haitian side on the other hand, the land is ninety three percent deforested. It is just bare hillsides, and due to the lack of trees to hold the soil, mudslides and flooding
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