Frank, Jeff, and I headed into Port Au Prince to pick up a group of four men from Memphis who had to come late. We spent the rest of that day driving around PAP, looking at the earthquake damage. We went straight for the Royal Palace, which you probably saw pictures of on the news. It’s their version of a capital building. It was completely destroyed; it used to be 3 stories tall, now it’s pancaked into one story. Hundreds died in this building.

Across from the palace, on three different sides, are tent-cities. Hundreds of thousands of people live in these tent-cities, on the door-step of the destroyed capital building. We decided to get a closer look at life in a tent-city, so we walked through one. This was not a great idea, as far as safety is concerned. My heart was pounding out of my chest: half because of looking into desperate eyes of people who are treated as dogs, and half because at any moment we could have been mugged/shot/killed/etc.

It made me think. Dogs, and other pets, in America live in circumstances a hundred-times better than these people. This isn’t right. After all, dogs are dogs, people are people. It’s disgusting to me. When will these people be given a chance to live as human beings? What about human rights? Don’t these people have a right to live better than an animal? Aren’t they entitled to anything? I don’t have any answers, just a lot of questions. I don’t even know to whom I should be asking these questions…