Dina lives in Haiti
OK, so I know there are much more important things going on in this world than my hair part. Up until a couple of years ago I had a sponsor child in a little country in the Caribbean called Haiti. Her name was, and hopefully still is, Dina. I have a file in my filing cabinet full of her letters, translated from French, and her drawings.
When I first sponsored Dina I didn’t know all that much about Haiti, and I enjoyed looking up facts and finding out more about the country through the sponsorship. Back then Haiti was the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere (one of the main problems being that much of the topsoil was lost through deforestation and erosion). I don’t imagine that will now change any time soon.
One day, after I had been sponsoring Dina for eight years, I got a letter from Compassion telling me that Dina and her family were leaving the area covered by the sponsorship, and basically I lost her. She then lived in Poste Metier, near Port-de-Paix which, from what I can gather, is far enough away from the centre of the recent earthquake that she and her family might be safe. But where they moved to I don’t know.
In all the news about Haiti I see a little girl called Dina, who liked “rolling a hoop, playing jacks and singing”.