Like most other people in the world, this disaster in Haiti has been weighing heavily on my heart. Oh my lord, this situation is beyond desperate. Beyond!
After the 9/11 incident, I learned that I need to let these kinds of crises seep into my brain slowly. Never again will I sit down in front of the television for three or four straight days, bawling helplessly, feeling crazed by the overwhelming sense of incapability and uselessness. The horrific snapshots of that time will forever be hardwired in my brain, like a newsreel that isn’t really real… but it was. Incomprehensible, still.
So, since then, as tsunamis wiped out populations in Asia, and Katrina displaced most of New Orleans’ people, etcetera… (etcetera!) I take in the information in smaller bites, so I can digest the situation more slowly. I shut the TV off when I can take no more. I merely scan the A-Section of the newspaper, rather than reading every word. It’s all entirely too heartbreaking.
My first thought about Haiti was, Are you kidding me? That country is such a fucking wreck to begin with!! Holy shit. Now as I’m carefully taking in more and more information and images and stories, I really can’t help but feel that I’ve been right all along: There is no God.
But what I believe or do not believe is hardly the point here. These people need help. They need so much help, it seems insurmountable. It seems impossible. And a donation of ten bucks seems like such a teeny-tiny drop in an ocean-sized bucket. Ack!! WHAT IS TO BECOME OF THESE POOR PEOPLE?!
A reporter friend of mine who works for our local paper in Montreal is in Haiti, reporting daily. Every day I read what she writes, and we stay connected through Facebook. She is exhausted and heartbroken. She can’t get the putrid, rank smell of death and decay out of her clothes and her hair… that a face-mask doused in perfume, nor lime peels stuffed into one’s nostrils can help mask the sickening stench. A stomach-lurching stench all around you, every day.
People who owned modest homes just last week are sleeping in the streets with their children, trying desperately to keep them safe, to find shelter from the hot sun during the day, to find something to fill their bellies with. People are stealing what little possessions they have from each other. Medical emergencies like Caesarean-sections are being performed in outdoor make-shift clinics. There are bodies, swarming with flies stacked everywhere, bloated, stinking and unclaimed. Women are being raped in the streets. Queues for water and food are never-ending. Many haven’t sipped or eaten much (if anything!) in a whole week.
To be empathetic, to put yourself in the shoes of another helps one understand another the best one can.
Imagine what it would be like to go without food for or water for two whole days. To not have a thing to put past your lips for 48 hours or so. My own mouth goes dry at the very thought. Imagine sitting curb-side to the house that was once yours, knowing that most of the family you knew and loved just hours ago are now dead and buried, crushed inside precariously crumbling concrete and rubble, save for the little voice of your six year old boy, still calling for you… help me, mama, I’m here… while you hold another listless, injured child in your arms, begging you, oh please, for something to drink, and you haven’t seen your husband since he left for work that fateful morning… and no one has seen him since…. and your own belly, swollen with your next child, nudging you from within, is rumbling voraciously… and you have absolutely nothing but the clothes on your back… what is to become of you if you don’t actually become catatonic from insanity? Dazed. Destitute. Dying. Somebody tell me what will happen to these people? Seriously, I have no idea. I have no freaking idea how one can get out from under in a situation like this.
Snippets of stories… scores of stories like these, assaulting my sense of fairness in the world. My sense of empathy makes me feel completely nauseous. The trauma they’re bound to suffer from for years is staggering.
My head feels so full, I want to cut it off.
. . .
We’ve been busily renovating an apartment we have for rent downstairs from us, fretting about the little details… heated floor for the bathroom? Trim molding on the ceiling in this room, or that? Marble tiles, or slate? It almost seems silly compared with everything going on in the world. (Of course, this is all relative.)
This weekend, we had birthday parties and karate lessons to attend, and in my limited time to get things done, I shopped for the presents instead of shopping for the groceries. Sunday evening, after a full day of activities, I found my cupboards almost completely bare. We had potatoes and eggs and cheese. I reasoned, in the worst case, we can always order something. And we did – rotisserie chicken, fries, and all the trimmings.
I’d neglected to put away the newspaper – I’m “hiding” the front section from the eyes of my boy, who is not quite reading yet, but the images that grace the front page are harrowing to say the very least. I don’t want him to worry. I thought I’d been doing a pretty good job of shielding him from magnitude of this disaster, until:
“Mummy? How do you say Haiti in French?”
“It’s the same, really. Ha-yee-TEE.” I pronounce for him, drawing out the word, with the emphasis on the TEE part.
“Oh. Where is Haiti?”
“I’ll show you on a map.” I fetched our National Geographic atlas, and outlined the Carribean islands with my finger. I showed him where Jamaica is, explaining that I was born there, but that we moved to Toronto when I was a very tiny baby. Haiti is just across the way, with the Dominican Republic on the other side of the land mass. He nodded with interest, taking in the geography.
“Something bad happened in Haiti, I think…”
Oh, crap. Here we go. Careful now…
“Yes.” I said. “There was an earthquake. A really big one that made most of the buildings fall down, and now there are a lot of people with nowhere to live.”
“Did people die?”
“Yes.”
“A lot of people?”
“Yes.”
“Like, hundreds of people?”
“Yes.” There’s no point explaining that it’s more like thousands. Tens of thousands. We’ll never know for certain. There’s no point worrying his little head.
“Kids too?”
“Yes.”
“Babies?”
I almost choked with grief. “Yes.” I watched his face carefully, looking for anguish, but really he was just concerned. So far, so good.
“But are some people still alive?”
“Yes! Lots and lots of people are still alive, but they don’t have anywhere to live yet, and they’re hungry and thirsty because the supermarkets fell down too… but the world is sending help. They’re going to get food and water and houses again soon.” I felt like such a liar in that moment, you have no idea.
He wandered away for a while… processing, I know. Dinner was on the table. When he came back, I could see that he had more questions.
“Could we have an earthquake here in Montreal?” He looked nervous. Carefully…
“Um… yes,” This is totally possible. “But not like that, baby.” I grabbed the atlas again, and tried to explain as basically as I could about fault lines, and the equator, and about underground volcanoes… and how this kind of thing is unlikely in our city. “There have been tremors once in a while, but it’s nothing. It feels like standing on the platform of the metro… just a little rumble for a few seconds.”
“But, would everything fall down?” Worried.
“No. Our buildings are nice and strong here. They won’t just fall down.” Big, fat lie. Canada’s oldest city has a wealth of issues with it’s infrastructure. A large piece of concrete fell off a building and killed a woman last year. But still… I shook it off. “Come, eat your dinner.”
We chatted some more about it all, and I was careful with my words. I tried not to lie. I had to gloss over things though. A lot. He was thoughtful.
“Are those people going to get some dinner tonight?”
“Yes,” I lied. “And you should eat yours. Please eat it all up. Isn’t it a good thing that we have something to eat?”
“Yes. And I love this sauce…”
Oh, my boy. My family that I love so much, safe in our home with full bellies and warm, clean beds to sleep in. How random the woes of the world are…
People, please. Times are hard for everyone everywhere, I know. But to lives like many of the ones we live, ten bucks is equal to about two cups of coffee at Starbucks. You can’t even get a good sushi lunch for ten bucks. It seems like such a small drop in the bucket, the crisis is soooo massive, I know… but if it could mean the difference between life and death for even ONE person, we really must do all we can. Please do, even if it’s only ten bucks. If you can do more, dig deeper. Please do something to help these people. We are so very fortunate not to be in their shoes.
And if it’s your thing, please pray for them.
Haiti, we all weep for you… help is coming. (Right?)
G.G.
