The Importance Of Poverty In Haiti

I believe that everyone goes through experiences in life that aid to “who they are today” or the person they become. These occurrences may help them comprehend their strengths, choices and weaknesses. An experience that helped me realize and gain insight as to just what I would like to do with my life, is when I eye witnessed the poverty in Haiti and was not able to do much, if anything about it. As a child growing up, I enjoyed sitting back and listening to my parents chat about their own upbringing. As Haitian immigrants they constantly reminded my siblings and I to be thankful for what we have, not to be wasteful and to value the great free education we receive. They, as well as, many other people did not have the things that we so often may take for granted. During the
Crowds of family members surrounded the airport. Who knew how long they have been waiting to see their loved ones. We left the airport and ventured to my grandmother’s house. Her home was nice, but almost everything else about the city was not. Houses were built one on top of the other. The streets were cracked and filled with potholes. The air reeked. Ditches were dug all through the city. Since water was not running through them, they were used as dumpsters. This was almost normal to these inhabitants. They did not have street cleaners or a trash company to come pick up their trash every week, so this was their substitution. Can you picture living right next to a few landfills? Well basically, they sure did. Traffic was atrocious. Many people, teenagers especially complain about law enforcement, but can you imagine what driving would be like without it. Traffic light were used but were clearly not respected, there were no stop signs, yield signs in use either. Students, children, whoever happened to be a pedestrian has to walk in between cars that were only halted due to the heavy traffic. I thought the city was bad, but the country’s poverty really “hit me” when we left the city