Haiti: Love Among the Ruins

I spent the weekend trying to avoid the sights and sounds of this human catastrophe.

But of course I couldn't, because to look away would be criminal. It's that awful.The devastation, the suffering, the lack of food, water and medicines.

And the worst thing of all. The cry of so many desperate survivors... where is the world?

"It has been four days since this thing," the man, Jean-Claude Hilaire, began. "And nobody has come yet. My area, Bel Air, is devastated. About 200,000 people have lost their homes. Twenty thousand – kids, pregnant women – are sleeping hungry in the local park. That's long enough. I need to know: is anybody coming? Is anybody going to do anything?"

It's so frustrating and depressing. I know it's a logistical nightmare. I know a lot of good people are working their hearts out to help the Haitians.... even as some mourn their own.

The agency has lost dear loved ones. Many officials have lost all their belongings.

Some United Nations section chiefs, officials said, are still sleeping in their cars. Water is so scarce that taking a bottle off someone’s desk can lead to hurtful confrontations. And workers said food was in such short supply the agency was considering charging for their daily rations.

But it all seems so agonizingly slow.

And my only consolation is the amazing strength of the Haitian people. Or, as Bob Herbert calls it, the resolve among the ruins.














Enslavement, murderous colonial oppression, invasions by powerful foreign armies, grotesque homegrown tyrants, natural disasters — all you have to do is wait a while in Haiti for the next catastrophe to strike.

And yet. No matter how overwhelming the tragedy, how bleak the outlook, no matter what malevolent forces the fates see fit to hurl at this tiny, beleaguered, mountainous, sun-splashed portion of the planet, there is no quit in the Haitian people.

They were brutally oppressed by their French colonizers, burned at the stake, buried alive, boiled in cauldrons of molasses. The United States tried to smother their baby republic in its crib. They have been betrayed by their own leaders, cheated, robbed, and worn down by poverty. They have been hit by one natural catastrophe after the other.

But still they endure.

Which is what I took away from one shiningly beautiful picture of a two-year-old boy who was pulled out of the ruins the other day.

He was sobbing and miserable in the arms of one of his rescuers.

Until he caught sight of his mum...
















Love among the ruins.

You know endurance is an awesome quality.

But the Haitian people have endured too much for too long.

And when this horror is finally over, they must NEVER be abandoned again...

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P.S. If you can help, here's a pretty good list of ways you can contribute.