Cholera and Hurricanes

This has already been a terrible year for Haiti. The earthquake killed over 200,000 people, and many hundreds of thousands more were left homeless and without food or income. Then a couple of weeks ago cholera was discovered in the north, which is slowly spreading, though not as fast as had been feared. But so far there have been over 300 deaths and nearly 5000 people sick. Now a category 3 hurricane is forecast to hit Port-au-Prince directly on Friday afternoon... It really will be devastating if that turns out to be the case. There are hundreds of thousands of people still living in camps under tarpaulin which they will lose in the high winds, as well as on mountainsides which if there are landslides will result in more deaths. How can one country suffer so much in such a short space of time? It is hard to know what to say in these situations. We continue to hope and pray for better things, but instead it seems to just get worse. But we must continue to hope and pray... This would be a good time for their forecasting to be really wrong!

Election Fever

The elections in Haiti are due to start on 28th November. I say "start" because they will go on for over a month! Already demonstrations have begun, and the general view is that they will only get more frequent and more violent as time goes on. There is increasing unrest about the lack of progress on moving out of camps. People who look like dodgy car salesmen smile out from 10 foot high billboards all around Port au Prince, and there are rumours that the key candidate (the son-in-law of the current President) has $12m to spend on his campaign. And as we run up to the elections there are more and more posters appearing. People want to know why he has such a ridiculously large amount of money to spend when there are thoousands of children who cannot go to school because their parents cannot afford uniforms and school fees. They see it as throwing money away and more abandonment of the people of Haiti, for the sake of political gain. People are sick of failed promises and false hope. We need to pray that a good candidate gets in to power. Someone who genuinely wants to change people's lives, and not just their own!

Money, Money, Money

Everyday I get junk mail from a variety of people offering me money: usually around 30 e-mails a day in my junk mail. This can range from someone who says they have a terminal illness and no-one to leave the money to, to the Swiss lottery announcing I have won a competition that I never entered, to someone posing as Microsoft or even on one occasion Bishop Desmond Tutu!! Today I was offered £156m that is lying unclaimed in some bank account somewhere. Sometimes these offers make me laugh, but sometimes they make me sad.  Who comes up with such terrible stories of terminal illness, sons who have died in Iraq, or money that came from Saddam Hussein? Who can be so evil as to prey on the desperate? It is after all only the desperate who would respond to such obviously ridiculous offers. Someone will end up losing what little they have becasue they will be desperate enough to believe it is true. There was a story of a lady recently who gave £60k to someone she had never met because he said he loved her and needed her help. It is sad to know that people are so lonely and vulnerable that they will believe anything that makes them feel a little better. There are so many people in the world who are lonely, and sadly there are people who just want to profit from that. Befriend someone today and make their lives a little happier!!