Are we hurting others while we are trying to help Haiti?

In my route BACK into Haiti this past Tuesday, after recovering from my illness, I encountered something that I felt was rather interesting... As usual, the ride started off well. We drove along the coast of the Dominican Republic and passed through its more rural cities. Now, for those of you who have never traveled from the Dominican Republic into Haiti (which I'm going to assume is a large portion ;) ) let me expalin.

There are two ways to get into the south border of Haiti coming from the Dominican Republic; one is going driving near Lago Enriquillo and the other is driving along the coast crossing through Barahona ( See Map below)

The only problem with the taking the route that follows the North border of Lago Enriquillo is that, due to its conditions, its very difficult to travel on it quickly. SO....in result, everyone who has been traveling into Haiti since the Earthquake has been taking the other route.

The other route is a single road that brings you directly to Jimani, the borderline entrance. Now, since the earthquake there has been more than 5,000 vehicles including; 16-wheelers, trucks, cars, busses, etc... using this road PER DAY! These roads were not prepared for this type of use and the results of that is begining to show.

We arrived in Cabral and this is where these effects were most evident! A once semi-paved road was now PURE dust and dirt. We were easy ridin' until we arrived here and found ourselves stuck at a home-made road block.

This picture only shows the road block constructed by the women! - Down the road there were apporximatley 3 other blocks, 2 of them made by knocking down an entire tree into the road! Not including the men guarding their post with shotguns and machetes.

The residents of this town were furious, yelling in rage expalining that they are suffering from all the dust and dirt being thrown up by the passing vehicles.

One poor women was crying saying that her little girl, who has asthma, was in the hospital due to a severe asthma attack... This was their form of protest! I guess in a sense, I can't blame them.

Evetually the line of vehicles that were in route to Haiti began to form... The authorities were called and so after that tanks and men with tear gas and shotguns arrived... All we knew was that it was time to get out of there...

My boss (a former soldier) jetted across with our vehicle, running over tress and branches and finally making it acorss... leaving the chaos behind... I'm still not sure of how the dispute was settled...