When Scott Hamel tries to describe the poverty that plagued Haiti even before Tuesdayâ??s devastating earthquake, he always goes back to a young mother he met there a few years ago.
She was living with her six children, two under the age of 1, in a hut the size of a walk-in closet. Her husband had gone to the Dominican Republic for work, and she had not heard from him in more than a year. She had no other family and was on the verge of being evicted.
“Basically, she had the clothes on her back, no income and no way to feed her children,” said Hamel of Madison, who has traveled to Haiti repeatedly as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Engineers Without Borders.