?It is now more than two week since tragedy struck Haiti, a coun­try that is about 200 years old that was not al­lowed to grow up to ma­tu­ri­ty. It has paid a ter­ri­ble price for it's suc­cess­ful strug­gle for in­de­pen­dence from France. Peo­ple who have read and stud­ied Caribbean his­to­ry will be col­lec­tive­ly singing and sigh­ing "Haiti we're sor­ry." Help is pour­ing in from al­most all cor­ners of the Earth, ex­cept some cor­ners that blame voodoo and/or the the­o­ry that they should have re­mained en­slaved by France for­ev­er. That de­bate will con­tin­ue for­ev­er. It is now time to re­con­struct Haiti and it re­quires the good­will of the whole world in­clud­ing the IMF, the World Bank, and the Eu­ro­pean states. They owe that to hu­man­i­ty.

The re­con­struc­tion must be planned and prop­er­ly su­per­vised and may take as many as 15 years to show some sign of progress. De­sali­na­tion plants are need­ed to pro­vide wa­ter and sew­er­age im­prove­ment as Haitians are put to mean­ing­ful work re­build­ing the coun­try un­der ex­pe­ri­enced su­per­vi­sion. Un­skilled cit­i­zens should be in­volved in re­for­esta­tion projects to as­sist in pro­tect­ing the soil. It is my hope that Haitians who are skilled pro­fes­sion­als like en­gi­neers, ar­chi­tects, and med­ical doc­tors will re­turn to give the cit­i­zens some hope for the fu­ture. As we go for­ward, may we nev­er have to sing/sigh again "Haiti we're sor­ry."

H Vial­va

Pe­nal