Reflection of Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Morgan Vorwald
Globe 330: Global Health Disparities
Dr. Betsy Matos
March 31, 2023 When thinking of a place like Haiti, many people think of a rural, impoverished nation filled with people in poor health that rely off assistance from countries like the US. As Tracy Kidder (2004) said in the beginning of the book, “… the world is full of miserable places. One way of living comfortably is not to think about them or, when you do, to send money” (pg. 13). As was emphasized in this book, Haiti is much more than an impoverished nation, but they are a nation that needed the help that Dr. Paul Farmer provided to improve their health. One thing that has influenced the health in Haiti
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Many have little and the country is still recovering from much of the population was enslaved. “In Haiti, I knew, per capita incomes came to a little more than one American dollar a day, less than that in the central plateau. The country had lost most of its forests and a great deal of its soil. It had the worst health statistics in the Western world” (Kidder, 2004, pg. 28). Historically, Haiti has been oppressed, first by the slave owners that brought them to Haiti from Africa, and then by countries like the US. Despite all the despairing past, Haiti has a vibrant culture. “Haiti had its own music and literature. Paintings by Haitian artists hung in European and American museums. The people of Haiti had created their own complex religion, Voodoo … It was a system of belief that seemed all the more worth studying because it was so widely misunderstood and ridiculed” (Kidder, 2004, pg. 81). Even the language of Haiti, Creole, was devised by slaves so that they could understand each other since “… the French masters had deliberately separated slaves who spoke the same languages …” (Kidder, 2004, pg. 81). Creole is a combination of African languages and French that is unique to Haiti, like Voodoo, and adds to the richness of their