Kevin Turnbull

GHist 150
Big Truck essay
March 26th, 2015
The Big Truck That Went By
Haiti was a poverty stricken country before the disastrous
earthquake of 2010, and despite billions of dollars of pledged aid,
continued to suffer afterwards. The biggest reason for this would be
the simple fact that Haiti is just too poor and too populous of a country
to take advantage of the amount of aid that was pledged.
The main reason Haiti suffered even after the relief effort was the
sheer size of the disaster. Haiti is one of the poorest, if not the poorest,
country in the western hemisphere, and certainly ranks among the top
10 in poor, poverty stricken countries. After the disaster of 2010, the
world banded together, and supposedly pledged upwards of 16 Billion
dollars. That may sound like a lot, however, Haiti is a country of about
10 billion people. Do the math, and thats $1.60 per person. In a
country where the GDP per capita is just around $800US, such a small
amount of money can be significant, however its not enough to pull an
already poor country out of the grips of a natural disaster like this.
Now, all of the above numbers were calculated assuming that all
$16 Billion that was pledged actually made its way to the Haitian
people. This was not the case. For starters, not all $16 Billion was

actually raised and sent to begin with. Not all fundraising goals were
met by certain groups, and so a lower amount was set to start with
from the beginning. On top of that, not all of this money went directly
to Haiti. As was shown in the book, most aid went to foreign
contractors, who then in turned pledged their services to Haiti, which
was not enough. Additionally, the money that did make it directly to
the Haitian people was often misused or outright stolen by the corrupt
government in place. Many high-ranking officials used the money that
could have been put towards rebuilding efforts for their own personal
bank accounts.
Any of the three of these factors would be enough to make the
already scarce resources even more so, but all three combined have
essentially doomed the poor nation to remain in poverty. Add this to
the fact that not enough money was coming to the country in the first
place, and its just a recipe for extreme and lasting poverty.