Note: Detroit News sportswriter Eric Lacy spent Aug. 10-17 in Haiti as a volunteer for Mission of Hope, a nonprofit organization that provides education, housing and health care to citizens who experienced hardship from the nation's earthquake last year and its ongoing poor living conditions.

This is an account of his experiences in Port-au-Prince, Titanyen and surrounding villages.

Titanyen, Haiti -- Family, friends and co-workers all had opinions about my coming here, and some even took the liberty to read me the slew of warnings on the U.S. State Department's website.

Their concerns, and the fact immunizations and pills cost more than my airfare ($410 vs. $380), made me wonder, as I headed to Metro Airport, if I was about to make a serious and potentially fatal mistake.

A few reasons why a weeklong jaunt to Haiti, a place deemed by the State Department as the "least stable country in the Western Hemisphere," isn't considered a good idea:

Travel there will increase the burden on a system, brought to its knees by a Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, that's already struggling to support those in need on the ground.

Haiti's medical facilities have inadequate public sanitation, which poses serious health risks, including vulnerability to the country's outbreaks of HIV/AIDS, malaria, cholera, meningitis, tuberculosis, respiratory infections and intestinal parasites.

A poverty rate of at least 80 percent has created a dangerous criminal environment that's led to "no safe havens" from murders, death threats, kidnappings, drug-related shootouts, armed robberies, break-ins and other security threats.

Call it blind faith, or an idiotic sense of adventure, but believe me when I say I'm glad I got on that plane.

A week spent as a volunteer for Mission of Hope, a Christian-based nonprofit relief organization, gave me more of an education about this world than I ever had in college at Michigan State.

Read the full article from The Detroit News.