MAY 2014 HAITIAN HERITAGE MONTH ESSAY CONTEST THIRD PLACE WINNER
Student’s Name: Stefan Wan
Grade:9
School: Dreyfoos School of the Arts - Sponsoring Teacher: Richard Ehrlich
Extracurricular Activities: Competition Math - Piano
Career Goals: Doctor
THEME: “From an historical perspective, explain the setbacks that have hindered Haiti‟s
development and suggest ways to overcome them.”
The bright morning sun shines down upon Haiti, The Jewel of Antilles. The view of the shimmering
sapphire blue ocean is breathtaking. However, if we flash back to today, we see sullen faces and muddy waters.
Trash litters the ground everywhere. Haiti was once the richest colony in the entire world. Economists estimate
that in the 1750s Haiti provided as much as 50% of the GNP of France. Nowadays, 80% of the population lives
on less than $2 per day. There are no significant sewer systems or trash collection systems in Haiti. This is just
the tip of the iceberg of problems that Haiti has. Haiti was once a great and powerful colony, but many factors
have led to its downfall. While the problem for Haiti may be big, there are still things for us, as average citizens,
which we can do to help.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Haiti was by far the richest colony in the entire Americas — including
the mineral rich Mexico and Peru. And the reason was it had great agricultural riches that are now nonexistent
today. And the other reason was it lived and thrived off of slaves. French plantation owners grew extremely
wealthy by literally working their slaves to death while growing everything from indigo to sugar cane. With so
many valuable products like sugar, coffee, and cocoa being produced for absolutely no pay, it’s almost
impossible to be a poor nation. The role that slaves played in Haiti’s wealth is enormous. An estimate from
1789 puts the number of free people at 55,000 vs. 450,000 slaves.
Now, Haiti suffers an abysmal $425 GDP per capita. Haiti is the 3rd worst country in the world for
calorie intake with an average caloric consumption of only 450 calories per day. How did a colony of such high
regard fall to one of such low stature? A single word can describe the start of the downfall of Haiti: revolution.
As said before, working conditions were so harsh for slaves in Haiti that it was almost inevitable the slaves
would revolt. In August of 1791, the Haitian slaves began a violent rebellion that would eventually lead to the
nation’s full independence in 1804. After they became independent, they ended up in a situation where they
were considered a threat by the entire rest of the region because the rest of the region, especially the United
States, owned slaves. A slave rebellion is not a good thing to have so close to a nation that owned several
million slaves of their own. After 1804, not only did the United States discriminate against Haiti, but all the
European powers like Spain and England. That discrimination meant no availability of resources to educate the
Haitian population, no significant trade with any polity outside of Haiti. Also, the abandonment of the
plantations into individual land parcels meant there’s no longer a coherent cash crop activity going on within
Haiti. All of these problems were left untouched, which kept going on into the 20th century. The population was
still 80-90% illiterate — a population that didn’t have any industrial skills, a population that wasn’t allowed to
trade its products with the rest of the world in any significant way. This plethora of problems eventually led
Haiti to become one of the most impoverished nations in the world today.
While it might take a little more than a Band-Aid to heal Haiti’s problems, there are still things we can
do to help improve living conditions. Aside from the obvious donating money, we can also create personal
hygiene kits. Several organizations allow people to make personal hygiene kits that will be shipped to Haiti.
Close to 82,000 kits have been mailed through Heart to Heart in the past year. These hygiene kits are especially
useful in the trash-ridden streets of Haiti, where 55% of the population have no access to clean drinking water.
The hygiene kits can also help curb the death rate from diarrhea in Haiti. We can also physically go there
ourselves and help rebuild the community. Many of the volunteers in Haiti are medical aid workers who are
sent to Haiti through organizations such as Doctors Without Borders. But organizations such as MedShare also
offer volunteer opportunities for nonmedical aid workers in the United States. With more than a million people
still displaced from their homes, there is still a great need for rebuilding efforts. In most cases, the best way to
help is through donations to various organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. While this organization is
currently not sending volunteers to Haiti, money raised over the past year has helped close to 24,000 families
through emergency, transitional and permanent housing. Another organization, ShelterBox, relies on donations
to send emergency shelter and other life-saving equipment to families in Haiti and other areas hit by disaster.
In conclusion, Haiti was once a wealthy and powerful colony, but it has since fallen to poverty.
Although it is one of the poorest nations in the world, there are still things we can do to help. Haiti was at the
pinnacle of economic wealth due to the efficiency of the slaves and the agricultural prosperity. Unfortunately,
one bad decision led to another and now Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world. Many organizations
like ShelterBox, Habitat for Humanity, and MedShare are all helping out Haiti and the average citizen can also
contribute to these organizations to either directly or indirectly help Haiti.