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| September 01, 2007 |
Haiti
We're off the coast of Haiti, with about 115 miles to go until we reach Port-au-Prince. We should be dropping anchor mid-afternoon, making it almost two full days of travel from the Panama Canal. When your're steaming along at 20 mph, it takes a while to get anywhere.
Friday evening we had a brief that lasted over an hour, giving us details about Haiti and our work there. Haiti is going to be the poorest country that this ship visits; in fact, it's the most impoverished nation in the western hemisphere. We were told statistics about the slums of Port-au-Prince, poverty, lack of clean water, HIV, literacy, tuberculosis, kidnappings, and more, with none of it positive. The brief ended with a short presentation by a Navy pyschiatrist, who wanted to prepare us for what we were about to see, and give us some tools to deal with it.
Posted by David at September 1, 2007 05:36 AM