There are, at last count, about 9,000 charities whose avowed purpose is to “help the people of Haiti”. There are about 9,000,000 people in Haiti, so there is a Haitian charity for every one thousand Haitians. One would think that all of them would agree to each help, say, a hundred Haitians a year. If they did, the charities would, in ten years, have helped every person in Haiti.
It may be that the charities could only help 50 Haitians a year. Then, it would take 20 years before every Haitian would be helped. If that had begun in 1990, by now there would be no Haitians who needed any help. All the Haitian people would have received all the help they needed.
A month ago, cholera outbreaks began to kill more Haitians. Many of them had not recovered from the recent earthquake, and are now dying in the tents they’ve built while waiting for help to come. Haitians seem to have gotten very used to waiting for help to come. They appear to have become so acclimatized to it, in fact, that they have developed few, if any, other skills or abilities.
Still, the 9,000 charities go on. They are raising funds. They are helping. One feels compelled to ask, “Who?”
