PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

The heading of this page is not intended as a joke. Unless you are trained, a doctor, a journalist, a construction worker or someone who can make a real contribution to Haiti, don’t even think about going now. Haiti is an unbelievable mess and it is going to be such for many months to come. A year from today, they will still be rebuilding Haiti and a year after that and so on.

But, make plans to visit Haiti in a year or two, if you can. It is not that far away, in miles, from the United States but it is world’s away from us in every other sense. I was there when I was 25 and I showed some pictures I had taken to a friend who just came back from Africa. She said the shots looked like they could have been almost anywhere in Africa, rather than less than a thousand miles from America.

It is a strange, wonderful and sad place and it will take your heart and soul and never give them back to you in the same condition. You will leave Haiti after a visit, but it will not leave you. I don’t know why this place has a strange and mystical pull for thousands of people who visit every year, but it does.

Haiti is a place of hunger, depravation and a few people who have wealth. The gap between those who have and those who have not is wider than the Grand Canyon. Some eat big meals in big houses, other people sleep, and die, in the streets. There are many people who will welcome you and, given a chance, become your friend. They do not resent you for coming from a country so much better off than theirs, they just wish they could have some of what we take for granted.

Visit Haiti and let Haiti visit you. The sadness of mass death will not be forgotten, not for a generation or more, but you can get to know a little about this place and, in a few months, you will see people who have nothing smiling, singing and going about their lives. It will stop you in your tracks if you pause and consider, just for a moment, why they are often so happy and we, who have almost everything, manage to make ourselves miserable.

Doug Terry, 1.17.10

The New York Times points out that Haiti is a place where people are not believed to die.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/weekinreview/17bell.html?hp

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