Inside or outside?

How much more can Haiti take? Just as people begin to recover from the earthquake, they now have to face an outbreak of cholera, mainly in the tent encampments where a million earthquake victims are living.

Health workers have been fearing this situation – the first outbreak in the country in more than a century – as the poor sanitary conditions in the camps leave people vulnerable. As of Sunday there were more than 3,000 cases and 250 deaths. Fortunately it seems that the spread to the capital Port-au-Prince has been slowed if not halted.

With clean food and water, cholera is not a difficult disease to avoid. Sadly however, life in Haiti is not so simple and this is the result.

In Mexico however, the violence continues. On Friday gunmen burst into a 14-year-old boy’s birthday party, killing 14 and wounding another 20. About 7,000 people have been murdered in the area since 2008 when the government declared war on the drug cartels.

A 20-year-old local criminology student, Marisol Valles, has been appointed as police chief in a nearby town. Her predecessor was beheaded in January 2009.

‘I am frightened, I am only human, but you have to learn to trust and to have hope that things can change,’ she said. ‘Have faith that we can do something about this security problem. We want to build a place where young people can fulfil their hopes and dreams.’

So which is worse, cholera in Haiti caused by taking in infected food and water? Or the relentless violence in Mexico resulting from the evil within those involved in the drug cartels?

According to this week’s readings, Jesus saw the heart as the source of defilement, something much harder to deal with (Mark 7:14–23). Brave Marisol Valles is facing quite a challenge.

Emlyn Williams