bookofmirrors | Thoughts on the Haiti Earthquake

This is from a friend of mine, the former

JudasLovesMe (don't bother clicking, his LJ is now defunct). It's amazing, as all his writings are. He posted this to his Facebook account, and the original is at this URL. Worth reading.

Thoughts on the Haiti Earthquake

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 12:27pm

[Only two paragraphs of this made it into the e-mail sent out to my firm, which is okay, better too much edited out than too little included...so I posted what I submitted in its entirety here.]

There is a childhood memory I have of a flower blooming from the cracks in a wall in my grandmother's house in Port-au-Prince, an incongruous riot of red and gold life sprouting from the most unlikely and innocuous of places. Similarly, there's something in hope that takes root in the soul like that flower, amid the unforgiving desolation of disaster and tragedy, and, despite the losses my family has suffered, it's been my blessing to have seen such a flower blossom over the past several days as rescue operations and charitable fundraisers have been mobilized with a speed that is nothing less than miraculous.

Since an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude struck the southern part of Haiti ten miles from the capital and devastated an already impoverished and battered republic on Tuesday, Jan 12, 5:32 PM EST, the world has seen the sun rising over the streets and shattered buildings of Port-au-Prince to illumine incredible acts of charity and compassion, men and women from around the globe and all walks of life coming together to salvage life out of death and despair with all the courageous strength of which the human heart is capable.

I was on the train heading home from work when the earthquake struck…I didn't hear the news until just before my car pulled into the driveway of my apartment complex, when a text from a friend in Illinois buzzed in on my Blackberry. I sat in my car for several minutes, trying to get my mind to wrap itself around the concept of an earthquake in Haiti and make sense of such a thing. Hurricanes for islands in the Caribbean are expected, and Haiti has had its fair share…but, an earthquake?

I called my mother as soon as I walked in the door. No communications were forthcoming, but Haiti's civil infrastructure was never the strongest; Haiti has been systematically ravaged by dictatorial governments and political corruption for most of its existence up to the present day, which puts the country's available power sources and communications grid significantly behind those of more industrialized nations. However, my mother's extended family resided within the wealthier districts of Port-au-Prince, so already we feared the worst.

My mother's voice was numb with shock, but I could already hear unshed tears in her voice; I kept my own composure until I got off the phone with her and started watching the news. One by one, the calls came, from all parts of the United States where my mother and father's families dwelled, reaching out blindly, seeking that same rescue from bewildered horror through the sound of a voice or if we were lucky, the touch of a hand.

The first photos coming in through CNN were of neighbourhood streets I'd walked through as a child spending summers with my grandparents, dragging a brightly colored kite behind me…the market places where my grandfather bought my cousins and me the local meat pastries we couldn't get enough of as we watched the sun set on the mountains in the distance…the courtyard outside the palace where we finished off our evening meal happily chewing on fresh sugar cane sticks in little plastic bags we'd brought from our own fields. So much joy, amid so color.

And now, all I saw were bodies…everywhere, bodies, littering the landscape like so much cordwood, stains of blood daubed on the pulverized bones of broken buildings, nightmarish visions against my will populating these memories of my childhood, overlaying them with air thickened with concrete dust and cries of anguished grief and pain. Bodies of people I knew and didn't know, my parents' country, the people that fathered me and mothered me. And, among these, my family, my cousins, their children, somewhere lost out there, and their family, here in the States, not knowing, and in the silent moments, I thought, Hell is the sound of the lost gone unheard.

For this, I wept. I wept for the blows struck against a place that should have been a paradise, as I'd not wept since my uncle died, as I hope never to weep again against the inexorable knowledge that, inevitably, as sure as there is life, I shall. I wept with gratitude every time news came of a family member found alive, and I wept in sorrow when the rubble was shifted back and their corpses were found. I regret that I wept more for sorrow than thanks for me and my family in the end, and I continue to weep for the privations of a people and a land that gave far more to me than I have returned in this lifetime.

The trial is not yet over…it's nowhere near over. While survivors in my family in Haiti have been accounted for, they and other Haitians still need help. Disease and starvation, always residents in the poorer districts, are gaining momentum in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding districts. Electricity and running water are sporadic, and medical care has been crippled. Criminals freed from their jail cells by the earthquake are looting and are threatening to intercept supplies sent for disaster relief. To their outstanding and everlasting credit, the people of Haiti haven't lost faith--even in the wreckage of human catastrophe, wounded in spirit, battered in body, homeless, they are praising God in the streets for their survival--but there is still a need for miracles, and those miracles can only come from outside Haiti. They can only come from you and me.

As an American born in New York City to Haitian parents, I was blessed with a roof over my head, an education in the public school system, food on the table, and medical care when I needed it. It took this disaster for me to realize that no matter how poor my family was, at our worst times, these resources were and have always been available…and for that alone, I'm blessed to be an American citizen. I've been reminded that what makes our country great is the willingness of its people to acknowledge their power as a community and as a nation to help those less fortunate than themselves. While our nation faces its own domestic challenges during these economic times, we are still a country rich not only in resources, but in resourcefulness. It takes so little to alleviate suffering; the cost of a fast food value meal here in the States can feed a family of four, or provide antibiotics against infection in Haiti.

Please help not only the family of my blood, but the family of my spirit by donating whatever amount you can to the matching program. You'll alleviate the misery of a people, and in doing so, you'll honor the nation which shared the courage and determination of America's founding fathers, a significant in black history: "the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful (slave) rebellion."