"Let them eat cake" - mud cakes, that is.

In his March 20th blog "Let Them Eat Cake," Nicholas Kristof writes of the possibility of a future column emphasizing how the recession is hitting poverty stricken countries like Haiti and the Dominican Republic harder than developed countries in the West. Kristof writes,

I’m sure plenty of people shrug: So what? We have problems at home. We can’t be expected to look after everybody. Let’s address our own needs first before we worry about Haitians….

So what do you think the best answer to that view is? Or do you agree with it?

After a Reason party featuring a panel on immigration last week, my friend and I discussed the situation in Haiti over sushi, and I had to admit that, as someone who has traveled back and forth from Haiti several times to work with NGO Three Angels Children's Relief, I respond to questions like Kristof's with more emotion than knowledge. Playing aggressively with my chopsticks and fidgeting with the table cloth while I spewed forth stories of orphans, sexually trafficked teens and hungry families I had come to know and love, I admitted that I didn't feel like someone qualified to speak to an issue that hits so close to home.

However, as I Googled news on Haiti this morning while pondering Kristof's question, I felt strongly that the question of "worrying about Haitians" is one that, at the very least, must be asked.

It is a question that many are, indeed, asking. Kristof's blog is especially timely as 30,299 Haitians were served deporation papers this past week, despite protests and The House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, refugees, border security and international law considering drafting a bill granting Temporary Protected Status to thousands of Haitians in the United States.

It strikes me that while Antoinette's sentiments were toward her own people, the debate over Haiti's surrounds a people that are not legally part of the U.S. Regardless, feedback on Kristof's blog speaks to the need for the U.S. to climb out of their bubble and connect with those around us:

Ultimately, we’re all connected - our environment, our health, our safety, and our prosperity. There are many examples under each of these “headings” where an issue or crisis doesn’t respect geographic boundaries. -Arlene

As I read, I thought about a certain day in July of '07 in Haiti driving down Delmas, the main drag in Port-au-Prince. Stuck in traffic and sitting in a van full of old clothes we were trying to get rid of, a few of us decided to hand them to the children begging outside of our windows. They took them, yelling, jumping and begging for more.

It didn't stop there. More children came: yelling for food, banging on the van windows, shoving skinny hands out to us. I had been hungry before I saw them. Afterward, my appetite had gone. I felt like a privileged American who knew nothing about what life in the real world felt like. These children put faces and hands to Haiti's hunger and devastation, making me face up to issues like the mud crisis.

It took me a few hours to get beyond my emotion and realize that my not eating would do nothing for the Haitian people except for making me grumpy with the orphans I was actually helping to feed. As dinner hit my stomach, an online conversation with my family at home helped me to realize that my privilege does make me responsible to help the poor and needy. And it is that conversation has stayed with me.

Perhaps, like Kristof, what we need is to be willing to ask the hard questions and to ask them not with irrational emotion or a mind only for economics but with perspective for what we have. And when we ask them, we must keep in mind that we are responsible for what we have been given.