“I saw, on the State Department Web site, their Haiti page and the first thing you see is a cruise ship coming up to a very plush resort,” Tom Plaut said, a 72-year-old volunteer for Mission Manna. “This is the American impression of Haiti, and it’s not like that at all.”

According to Plaut, Haitian children play in burning garbage dumpsters, some without clothing.

“This is my Haiti, this is the Haiti that I saw half a mile from my hotel,” he said. “This (the cruise ship) is the Haiti that American’s want to see.”

Haiti represented great wealth in the Americas and operated one of the most successful ports of the new world, according to Historians. During the 19^th century, Haiti won its independence from France, and the United States placed an embargo around the Haitian colony.

Haiti fell into debt to France during its revolution because many slaves died in the war. Slaves that France said they should be compensated for, according to historical records.

“In payment of that debt, Haiti fell into permanent debt because they borrowed that money from the United States and France,” said Plaut, a retired lecturer of sociology at Mars Hill College.

Haiti never recovered from that debt and went from the wealthiest of colonies to one of the poorest. According to Plaut, the debt accrued went toward military installments that exploited human rights.

According to International Monetary Laws, officials consider the debt “odious” and should not need to be repaid. Recently, congressmen in Canada and the U.S. proposed bills excusing Haiti’s debt, but they did not pass.

“I think that’s going to be a major part in rebuilding Haiti. This recognition of this past debt to Haiti,” Plaut said. “The more people learn about this history, I don’t know how they can’t, with any good conscious, say they don’t owe us a thing. I think we owe them a chance.”

Haitians struggle through financial instability

Mission Manna’s original plan to build a hospital turned out financially infeasible and led them to build a facility focused on preventing illness, according to Plaut.

“Western Carolina couldn’t afford a hospital, Yancey County couldn’t afford one, how do you think you could build on in Haiti, staff it and maintain it?” he asked. “The people in Haiti agreed, and now we have a facility focusing more on nutrition and hiring more and more Haitian staff.”

According to Plaut, whenever people plan a trip to Haiti they call the Haitian staff on the ground to find out if it’s safe to travel. Another trip is planned for April.

“When Mission Manna began, everything was done by people in Asheville. Now, we have three Haitian members of the board,” he said. “The major change for us has been over the years developing trust with Haitian staff and having some really wonderful people there organize stuff for us.”

The average yearly Haitian income averages $1,700, according to Plaut. Comparatively, the U.S. averages $40 thousand or more per household, according to the U.S. census. People in Haiti do not make enough to feed their families and get by, Plaut said.

“People claim the corruption of Haiti. When you go through customs they ask for extra payment to approve your suitcases. Well, they don’t make enough to feed their families,” he said. “It’s very hard for people in America to understand that because we live in a country with enough wealth that we can rely on laws, and everybody plays by the rules, supposedly.”

Due to financial disparity, Mission Manna strives to provide financial stability to its Haitian staff, according to Plaut.

“We increasingly are able to pay them. We try to pay a greater and greater percent of their salary and it’s all part-time,” he said. “Mission Manna is very small and it’s all volunteer with no paid staff in the United States.”

Organizations pull through, no matter the cost

Mission Manna operates out of Grace Episcopal Church in Weaverville, forgoing the traditional infrastructure and focusing that money on the job at hand, according Plaut.

Mission Manna lacks a full-time fundraiser and official office, but they manage to perform their goals efficiently in Haiti.

“We have a treasurer and we have all the structure, but we found it’s a lot more efficient if you don’t have an overhead,” he said.

Money donated to Mission Manna buys medical supplies, pays the Haitian staff members and buys food products, according to Plaut. Food and medical supplies make up the primary goals for Mission Manna.

“When someone sends a check to our P.O. box it goes into our Mission Manna account. All of that money goes to programs,” he said. “If anybody from Asheville goes to Haiti we have to pay our own way. None of it comes from collected funds.”

The Red Cross utilizes donated funding based on how the donor dedicated the money and on the overhead expenses, according to officials.

“Basically, what we’re doing here, is accepting donations on behalf of our national organization,” Steve Dykes said, director of marketing and development at the Asheville Red Cross. “We ask people to either designate it for Haiti relief or to the International Disaster Relief Fund.”

Money marked for the International Disaster Relief Fund will primarily be used in Haiti, for the time being, though it could be used elsewhere if the need arose, according to Dykes. The Red Cross uses donations for the Haiti relief fund exclusively for Haitian projects.

“We have teams on the ground in Haiti who are assessing constantly what is most needed,” he said. “It’s purchased under the best terms possible and transported as best we can right now.”

The Red Cross purchases medical supplies, food, clothing and other necessities either in Haiti or nearby cities to not only make transportation easier but to help rebuild the local economies, according to Dykes.

“In disasters like this you work with the U.S. military, you work with whatever relief organizations are on the ground,” he said. “But we have our own response plans as well.”

According to Plaut, many people prefer to give donations to organizations with very little overhead costs and put their money to its fullest use.

“They want to get the most bang for the dollar. If you give a dollar, you’re going to see a dollar on the ground,” he said. “I think that’s been Mission Manna’s motto from the start. All volunteers here. And the only people who get paid are the ones doing a lot of work in Haiti, and they need to get paid.”

The average person in Haiti earns $2 per day, and Mission Manna attempts to provide salaries for its Haitian staff and move them from part-time into full-time work status, according to Plaut.

Rising costs in Haiti

Haitian staff bargain for supplies, rent the trucks necessary for traversing mountains and doctors purchase medical supplies with the money Mission Manna raises.

“They (medical supplies) used to get donated a lot more than they are now. It seems to vary from trip to trip,” he said. “Now there’s much less of that but there are warehouses of medical supplies, developed by mission groups, and the medicines are specifically for this kind of thing.”

In the past, some groups brought expired medical supplies into Haiti, causing more harm than good, according to Plaut.

“You have to be careful about that because people in Haiti are very particular about not having drugs that are out of date,” he said.

The earthquake in Haiti caused basic food supplies to triple and gas prices to rise to around $40 per gallon, Plaut said.

Recent growth in American food export weakened Haitian agricultural output when the Haitian government lowered the import tariff, allowing imported foods to flood the markets of Haiti. The tariff provided protection for local farmers, according to Plaut.

“When the Haitians lost that protection, that dumped a lot of American rice into the markets and the meant the local rice-growers were gone,” he said. “And then when the price of rice doubled in 2008, after the hurricane, people just went nuts. They couldn’t afford it.”

Mission Manna remains unaffected by the economic recession in the U.S. and continues to collect money and volunteers, Plaut said. Spreadsheets depicting children’s growth from week to week allow people to see how Mission Manna utilizes funds.

“I think we are doing a little better than before. And I think the reason is because we have been much clearer about what we’re doing,” he said. “One of the most important things is people want to see where their dollar is going.

If you go to a party where there is a lot of alcohol, you are likely to find loud and
rambunctious partiers pushing each other around proving supremacy. Your average
stoner would prefer to discuss the deeper meaning of life, how awesome the weed is,
complain about the “munchies” and laugh at mundane flashings on the television.

According to the Drug Policy Alliance Network, over half of a million people were
arrested for possession of marijuana. Marijuana is considered a “gateway drug” for more
harmful substances to reach the public.

According to the DPAN, authorities created the “gateway theory” because of the
popularity of weed, even among those using harder drugs. But the average stoner prefers
the “all natural” approach, and isn’t interested in any other kind.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that marijuana causes temporary memory
loss, loss of coordination, temporary states of euphoria and heightened sensitivity to
sights and smells. According to NIDA 6-11 percent of all fatal accident victims had
marijuana in their system. What they also record is that most of those same people had
alcohol in their system.

The problem is not with the marijuana, but with the alcohol. Marijuana makes most
people happy and easily amused, while others mellow out, but rarely does a user feel the
urge to move very far from their present location on the couch.

According to the Centers for Disease Control reported 61 percent of adults used alcohol
in 2007, and over 22,000 people died from alcohol use. Some of these deaths were liver
related, and many were violence or driving related.

On the flip side, the National Institutes of Health reports that only 8.3 percent of
Americans over the age of 12 use illicit drugs. Drug induced death, including harder
drugs such as cocaine, are averaging around 15 people out of every 100 thousand.
Marijuana deaths? Minimal.

Science even found marijuana to have great medical uses, including: reduction of
nausea and pain in chemo patients, increased appetite for those with AIDS and even
neurological benefits.

Despite many medical uses for marijuana the American Medical Association still
prohibits its use. Though there are other drugs in place to deal with the same symptoms
marijuana could treat, some people don’t like synthetic medication. And marijuana is
often cheaper to attain, and doesn’t require a prescription.

Authorities need to take into account their own statistics and realize that marijuana users
are not a threat to anyone. They allow alcohol to be served at restaurants and sold in
stores, while marijuana can’t even be used in the medical world.

Why marijuana can’t be legalized and taxed like alcohol is beyond logic. In 2006 a Tax
Policy Institute recorded over $5 million in revenue from alcohol sales tax, and over $14
million from cigarettes. Imagine the tax benefits that could be generated via the
legalization of marijuana.

As for potential dangers, a comparison the two users should make things obvious.
Someone drinking alcohol has potential to become violent, drive while impaired, or start
a physical fight. The biggest threat a user of marijuana poses is to your refrigerator.

Mission Manna began in 1992 through an Episcopal work camp in Haiti and broke away from the church in 2003 into something broader and ecumenically based. They provide medical care to children from birth to 5-years-old. Clinics in Montrouis, located north of Port-au-Prince, remain a primary goal for Mission Manna.

“We go down there twice a year with teams of about three or four physicians and three or four nurses and lay people. We team up with an equal amount of Haitians, who we now pay and are doing more and more of the care,” said 72-year-old Tom Plaut, an active member of Mission Manna.

In addition to the bi-annual trips, a 12 month clinic, run by Haitians, takes care of monitoring and treating the children, according to Plaut.

“The dream was to build a hospital for sick children, and that proved to be too dreamlike and impractical and financially impossible,” he said. “So we worked with kids so they wouldn’t get sick to begin with.”

Mission Manna clinics provide worming medicine, vitamins and the supplement AK1000, a mixture of rice and protein.

“There are programs in the Carolina’s that package the stuff here and send it down,” he said. “But we buy it locally (Haiti) from local farmers and have them ground locally.”

AK1000 feeds three people for several days and costs less than a dollar, according to Plaut.

“We try to do as much as we can there. What we carry in are vitamins and medicine for the clinics and we try to leave as much there for our staff to work with,” he said. “What we are going to try to do in the future is put more and more in the hands of Haitians to administer themselves, rather than us doing it.”

Hearts with Hands, located in the Asheville area, began during Hurricane Andrew when Dr. Ralph Sexton, a local Baptist pastor, took a group to the affected areas and provided help, according to Bill Bradley, director of the program.

“It’s very much volunteer-driven, it just wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for the volunteers,” he said.

Hearts with Hands responded to every disaster since 1992, including 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and the tsunami in Southeast Asia. Everywhere they go they leave with contacts and continuously create networks throughout the United States, according to Bradley.

“It’s a networking thing more than anything else, it gives us a lot of advantages, ears-to-the-ground a lot quicker,” he said.

Hearts with Hands focuses their efforts on a Haitian orphanage and hospital, located between St. Marc and Port-au-Prince, working with several missionaries stationed in the area, Bradley said.

“They’re screaming for medical supplies. This hospital is in an 11-acre compound and they only let a small number of people in at a time, treat them and let them back out,” he said. “They are having to do that right now because they don’t want to get too many in there and get taken over from the inside.”

Mission Manna collaborates with Haitians. They work in five surrounding areas each time they take a clinic down, Plaut said.

“We had a group in October and we saw 1,230 kids in five days,” he said. “We got doctors out of their offices for a week, so we have to hit the ground running.”

The Haitian people exercise their jobs efficiently and organize clinics so that people are lined up waiting when the doctors arrive, according to Plaut.

“I think one thing that always impressed me is these people will wait in the blazing sun, 100 degrees, and driving rain and just wait patiently for these doctors to see their children,” he said. “A degree of patience and tolerance you’d be hard-pressed to find here.”

The area of Montrouis, two hours north of Port-au-Prince, didn’t sustain damage from the recent quakes, though hurricane recovery from 2008 remains underway, including major bridge reconstruction, according to Plaut.

“All of our staff is OK and survived, but all of them lost family in the quake. The devastation is unbelievably huge,” he said.

The YMCA joined with Park Ridge Hospital’s attempt to get yoga mat donations to be sent to Haiti. Yoga mats offer a place to sleep other than the ground and can be used for meditation that often helps with trauma relief, said Lynn Trezise, group exercise coordinator at the Asheville YMCA.

“They were looking for mats, camping mats, for the people that were displaced by the earthquake,” she said. “Right now most of those people have nothing except what was on their back. And it just so happens that you could do yoga on it.”

The Mats for Haiti campaign accepts any type of mat or air-mattress, according to Trezise.

“They were hoping that we would have extra, or old, mats that we could donate, which we do,” she said. “And we took it a step further and started asking around for more donations.”

Cost of food and supplies tripled due to devastation, raising the cost from roughly $1,200 a month to $3,600, according to Plaut. Weakened infrastructure inhibits trips back to Haiti as well.

“We’re hard-pressed to get all that money, but we’ve got to do it,” he said. “In the meantime we’re going to be funneling money to our Haitian staff and families on the ground and keep them going.”

Hearts with Hands attempts to keep their orphanage and hospital running by taking financial donations from individuals and requesting medical donations from surrounding medical facilities, according to Bradley.

“This orphanage has about 65 kids now and didn’t sustain a lot of damage,” he said. “But the thing that is going to happen, and is already, is they’re bringing the evacuees into that area.”

Local community support allows organizations, like Hearts with Hands, to continue working according to Bradley. Hearts with Hands helps local residents with food banks and school functions and averages 35 volunteers on a typical day. When disaster strikes, volunteer counts rise to nearly 500 people.

“If you don’t have a strong community presence you probably aren’t going to survive,” he said. “Disasters come, but sometimes they’re sporadic.”

Mission Manna relies on donations and volunteers and raises money via their Web site and outreach.

“We diverted some of our fund raising to things like the shelter boxes that provide tents for people,” Plaut said. “But at the same time we have to keep ourselves going.”

The shelter boxes contain tents, mosquito nets and survival tools are dropped into disaster zones and roughly 1,500 are currently in Haiti, according, to Plaut.

Heart’s With Hands ships supplies to St. Marc instead of Port-au-Prince because it allows for more efficient movement to their site, according to Bradley.

“We’re going a few hours north. Problem is it’s a smaller port, you can’t take as big of ships,” he said. “I don’t know why anyone would send anything into Port-au-Prince right now. I know they need a lot right there but they can’t seem to move any of it.”

Shipping supplies and giving donations, instead of physically going, allows the people in Haiti to operate without volunteers getting in the way, and Mission Manna currently has one physician on site, Plaut said. UNCA alumni and students are already on the ground in Haiti, and others plan to go infrastructure allows travel.

“You don’t want to go down and provide them with more mouths to feed,” he said. “It seems to us like the best thing to do is work with other organizations that are already on the ground.”