NEGLECTED!!

By Kerwin De Matas

We really take everything that we have for granted, don't we? I grew up in the Caribbean, Trinidad to be precise, and I've been trying to push myself to remember, where in my schooling, have we studied any topic on Haiti or Cuba. Speaking for myself now, don't know if I was that lousy a student, but I can't recall learning anything about those two islands from school.

A Common Site

The rest of the Caribbean, were all very well covered in school, I mean, I knew so much about the rest of the other islands, before even leaving Trinidad.. Imagine, now, I am learning more about Cuba, because of the Cubans I met in Miami, and the Cubans here in Chile. Of Haiti now, I learned more of that island, when I worked on the cruise line. That particular company, had a piece of peninsular on the north coast of Hispaniola, and I would say it was beautiful, but what lay beyond the gate of that private beach ( because that's all it was.. ) was truly sad.

Outright Lawlessness..

Now I see almost every day on the news, Haiti, the most poor island in the Caribbean, with an economic structure, that simply doesn't exist anymore ... I was looking at a Chilean program, on U.N peace keeping soldiers, based in Haiti in this moment. What I saw was totally unreal, of course, every where you go, you would see poverty of some sort, but the extreme poverty and disorder, like what I saw in Haiti, I mean, right in our backyard in the western hemisphere?

A Kid Begging For Food...

This is totally unbelievable!! What about the islands that are economically well off, like TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO! BARBADOS! JAMAICA! What's up! Are we going to wait for other countries to take care of a problem that's ours? For shame! So we are not going to take the responsibility, no aid efforts...

Peace Keeping Soldiers In Haiti

The kids I saw on that program were depending on these peace keeping soldiers, to give them scraps of food to take home. Many of those kids can't even read or write, but they learned the languages of the previous to the present peace keeping soldiers, so that they can get the special attention, when begging for food....People can say what they want, but one shouldn't have to be starved for food to a point, where they instill in their memories, the ability to learn, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish etc, from the peace efforts that come to their island, just for the sake of begging!!

H.I.V, 1 Out Of Every 5

Again, kudos to you Chile and your peace keeping soldiers, and kudos to the other peace keeping efforts that were on the island before. I am really embarrassed, not knowing that these events were taking place in my own backyard, for shame on us all, the so called happy people of the Caribbean!!

Good Water Is Hard To Come By