3/20/12 Cat...It's what's for dinner! -by Rachel

We’ve all heard the stories about Haitians eating cat and even though our beloved 91 year old Ivy told me that years ago she had gotten tired of “them stealing” her cats to eat I wrote it off as a wives tale. Until today. I was walking down a street downtown in Port-au-Prince and when I looked up there he was. A twenty-something not quite emaciated, not quite well fed Haitian man wearing a white shirt and black jeans. You could tell by his swagger he was bringing home the bacon…. Except it wasn’t bacon. It was cat. A fluffy black and white cat… dead and bound by all four paws for easy toting.

If you are emotionally disturbed you should stop reading here…

Today we walked (close your ears mom) downtown Pap where we saw tons of what I can find no other word in my vocabulary for but Hoovervills. Thousands of people are living in shanties made of pieces of tents, tarps, scrap sheets of roofing tin and cardboard. There are central areas piled with trash… I tried not to breathe through my nose but I would rather the little hairs in my nose catch all the sick smelling germs in the air rather than them entering into my mouth. We see naked children running everywhere… common in Haiti but this was more desperate. I watched two boys about 6-8years old bathe in raw sewage running down the side of the street. They did have a bar of soap, but I wondered “What’s the point?” We saw the palace… you cannot see in those pictures you saw on CNN the tread that it is hanging by. I fully expected it to collapse any second… it is a magnificent sight to behold with your own eyes. Not even Niagara Falls is more poorly represented by photos.

I know that I won’t stick to this resolution, but I am finished taking pictures of these people in their destitution. I won’t exploit their suffering anymore. I am torn. When I saw the children bathing in the sewage I felt like “people need to see this.” But then if I were that child and had nowhere else to bathe how would I feel?… “Isn’t it bad enough that I bathe in this crap without you taking a picture of me with your $300 camera while I do so?”  I mean it wasn’t like Jesus was frantically pulling his camera out of his purse each time he saw someone in need. (Although I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t have a camera… or a purse for that matter.) Where is Joe Jaggers when taking a photograph becomes an ethical dilemma?

Speaking of ethical dilemmas… what’s the point of all this Jesus? Frankly I am sick and tired of seeing people suffer. Did you bring me here just so I can see how little I am capable of doing? Point taken… loud and clear! I thought you said “It is finished.” I mean it can’t be finished if people are still suffering like this right?