Before we can help others, oughtn't we help ourselves? The homeless Americans are in a freezing country, can't they get some help?

I agree that they are lazy (and often high or drunkards), they are still close to home. People the world over are suffering tremendously (child sex slaves in Eastern Europe, prostitutes in Thailand, just to name a few). American's complain about 1 in 16,000,000 odds of a terrorist bombing, the Israelis live under the threat of suicide bombers daily. In an effot for a religious debate, Haitians, some say, made a pact with the devil 200 years ago. I, myself, have never heard corroborating evidence and thus I do not believe that, but I should like to see some of that on here. What I am saying is this: Why is everything about Haiti these last 2 weeks. CNN still is talking about it - hasn't anything else happened the world over?

How about this: why help the Haitians when the Americans could be helping Africans? Average age in Swaziland is 31.99. People die every day at very low ages. The average infant mortality rate in Niger is 11.7%. Literacy rate in Ethiopia is 42.7%. America is just as capable of sending aid to Niger where they could save infants; Swaziland, where they could help the starving; or Ethiopia, where they could teach them basic educational skills. You can count on their country never getting on it's feet if the people never learn to read and write.

What I'm saying is this: millions and millions of people are living in conditions little better than those in port-au-prince - and they have been living in it for decades. Did anybody give them a second thought? But now a Western country gets affected and everybody stops where they are and rushes to help. In a few years, Americans will be saying 'Hey, you remember that bad ol' 'quake somewhere in the Caribbean?' and the response 'Yeah, I think it was Grenada or some other place like that.' Meanwhile, in Africa, thousands of people will be dying everyday.