No one would confuse Haiti, with most of the other countries in the Western Hemisphere, but with assistance from first world nations around the world, and the UN it is amazing the country is still in existence.
Haiti has been plagued with every kind Of bad luck, poor decision making, bad judgement, U.S. meddling, horrible corruption and ineptitude for its entire existence. The last thing they needed was a massive earthquake. And it came with strings attached support of the United States, The Clinton’s, NGO’s, Hollywood, and the UN.
United States- a country that has meddled with Haiti from the beginning and Haiti is no better for it.
The Clinton’s- no two people have been better examples of offering empty promises while enriching themselves at someone Else’s expense.
NGO’s- with the exception of about 5 they are organizations-that if you give money to them- you can bet with near 100% certainty the money will benefit no one but the said NGO.
Hollywood- in this case Sean Penn, who at first was a worthwhile force, but like everything social/politics that he gets involved in became about Sean Penn.
Lastly The UN. An organization who makes the American government look efficient. Who employs the dregs of its members to act as soldiers, who do so because the pay is better than what the countries military pays, this institution is so inept and corrupt that its very existence is embarrassing. Everything they touch goes to shit. In the case of Haiti, literally as the troops from Nepal brought with them Cholera, a disease that had not previously been found on the island EVER! And is still killing Haitians.
You also learn about the games countries play with pledged financial support and how very little if any is ever delivered.
This is an outstanding but terribly sad book of how when disasters happen around the world the response of the world powers is pathetic. ( )

‘The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster’ (2013) was written by Jonathan M. Katz, an American journalist who was in Haiti when the earthquake struck, and writes about the aftermath. His description of the post-earthquake period is quite good, a balance between general observation and personal drama, and brings back memories – I was there, too. As so many others, Mr Katz also vents a lot of criticism about what happened with the massive aid campaign, and to be sure, not everything went well, he does have a few points to make. But like all those others that made those points, Mr Katz doesn’t really come up with solutions on how to do better next time. His suggestions, for instance more NGO meetings in French? You simply cannot get enough French speaking people together for such an operation. More Haitians involved? There is simply not the capacity, locally, like it or not. More money to be disbursed, sooner and through local government? Here, too, history – and present day reality -really suggests otherwise. It is easy to be critical, more difficult to come up with a plan to do things differently next time. Of course mistakes were made, with hindsight things could have done better. But many, very committed people, did the best they could, in extraordinary difficult circumstances. And when Mr Katz recognises, at the end of the book, that Haiti is different, different from so many other places in the world, he fails to make the link with what has gone on before, during the aid operation. ( )

No one would confuse Haiti, with most of the other countries in the Western Hemisphere, but with assistance from first world nations around the world, and the UN it is amazing the country is still in existence.
Haiti has been plagued with every kind Of bad luck, poor decision making, bad judgement, U.S. meddling, horrible corruption and ineptitude for its entire existence. The last thing they needed was a massive earthquake. And it came with strings attached support of the United States, The Clinton’s, NGO’s, Hollywood, and the UN.
United States- a country that has meddled with Haiti from the beginning and Haiti is no better for it.
The Clinton’s- no two people have been better examples of offering empty promises while enriching themselves at someone Else’s expense.
NGO’s- with the exception of about 5 they are organizations-that if you give money to them- you can bet with near 100% certainty the money will benefit no one but the said NGO.
Hollywood- in this case Sean Penn, who at first was a worthwhile force, but like everything social/politics that he gets involved in became about Sean Penn.
Lastly The UN. An organization who makes the American government look efficient. Who employs the dregs of its members to act as soldiers, who do so because the pay is better than what the countries military pays, this institution is so inept and corrupt that its very existence is embarrassing. Everything they touch goes to shit. In the case of Haiti, literally as the troops from Nepal brought with them Cholera, a disease that had not previously been found on the island EVER! And is still killing Haitians.
You also learn about the games countries play with pledged financial support and how very little if any is ever delivered.
This is an outstanding but terribly sad book of how when disasters happen around the world the response of the world powers is pathetic. ( )

The author, Katz, was an AP reporter in Haiti during and after the 2010 earthquake that killed over 100,000 people. This book tells the story of the earthquake and about the next 18 months, through the subsequent presidential election.

The story of the earthquake itself is quite good, and one gets a good feeling for the situation in Haiti, as well as for the life of an AP reporter. However, the book declines in quality toward the end, especially with the author's detailed description of his reporting on a cholera outbreak (which was brought to Haiti by Nepali UN peacekeepers). Katz is obviously very proud of his reporting on the outbreak, but the story is not nearly so interesting as the earthquake, and Katz's reporting is annoyingly repetitive and insistent. (We need a much fuller investigation, he says, because it could be a coincidence that the cholera has the same DNA as the Nepali strain---it could have come from a shipment of food from somewhere else, and maybe the same shipment will go to the US!) But there's no mystery here, and it is obvious where the cholera came from.

One has to be careful reading this book. Katz is a fine reporter, but is incredibly naive about anything outside that expertise. His opinions on development aid, on economics, politics, and on corruption are all mostly wrong, and usually ignore the evidence right in front of him. For example, he heavily criticizes aid organizations for worrying about riots. There were major riots about 11 months after the earthquake, but Katz sees the 11-month delay as evidence that riots should never have been a concern. The spark of those riots? A corrupted election. Katz says the election should have been delayed, despite Haiti's poor record with dictators. Despite this, Katz says that Haiti's reputation for corruption is overblown---even as his long-time Haitian aide and photographer triple-charges him for gas expenses and then effectively steals his personal car. On economics, Katz describes how Southeast Asian countries have developed their economies by starting with textiles production and moving on to higher-value industries as labor costs rise. But then he says that Haiti should not try to go into textile production (or any industry) because if labor costs rise then the factories will leave and Haiti will be back to square one. (Who knows why Haiti can't move up the same as everyone else did.) ( )

Nonfiction. A great primer on the history of US involvement in Haiti, the problems with international and American approaches to aid, and the devastating earthquake and its aftermath. ( )