Haiti Update

I had more links to add to this, but MY FRIEND'S 75 YEAR OLD NURSE MOTHER IS ALIVE!! That's all I know, and we just got the phone call.


Something productive some of you can do: Donate your cell phones to an agency which refurbishes them, cells them to developing nations, and then donates the procedes to
The Red Cross.
David Brooks on Haiti:

More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.


Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.


As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.


We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Pittsburgh News on the BRESMA orphans- they have planes, now just need permission to land them in Haiti, then they will come back to the states. This is good news, but it's not a fairy tale. Culture shock piled on top of major trauma is not an easy thing to deal with. The kids' immediate needs are met this way, and lives are saved. What happens next is far more complex.

Danny Glover knows why the earthquake happened in Haiti:
When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Haiti has 890 million dollars in debts to the US. This is a petition asking the US Treasury secretary to cancel Haiti's Debt and ask that all aid be provided as grants rather than loans.

Americans give generously, and then give some more:

As of the last tally on Friday the campaign was at well over $8 million. "Earlier Thursday, when the Red Cross topped $3 million in text and social media donations — it hit nearly $40 million from all sources by late Thursday — spokesman Jonathan Aiken described it as 'a phenomenal number that's never been achieved before.

 For some perspective, this amount is several multiples of ten greater than a number of  countries pledged (including some industrialized nations)- and this is just The Red Cross.  How much more has been donated to other charitable organizations?

stories from Haiti:

Through Tuesday evening the man sang to his daughter until he died, Mr. Phanor told his wife. As for Mr. Phanor, she said, he “screamed, he cried, and when he ran out of breath, he said his final prayers to God.” She added, “He made his peace.”

From The Anchoress:

Cremating bodies in the streets (H/T Lucianne):

Although doctors, rescue teams and supplies had been flying into the capital, Port au Prince, a series of bottlenecks meant aid was not getting to those who needed it most.
…
Even the most stoic Haitians began to express frustration at the continued lack of help on the fourth day of their ordeal, and in one part of the capital corpses were piled up to build roadblocks in protest at the delays.
…
The problem has been worsened by the complete destruction of Port-au-Prince’s main prison, where almost all of the 4,000 inmates survived the earthquake and are now roaming the streets.
Rescuers have been told to stop work when it gets dark because of fears they will be attacked.
“Our biggest problem is security,” said Delfin Antonio Rodriguez, rescue commander for the Dominican Republic. “Yesterday they tried to hijack some of our trucks. Today we were barely able to work in some places because of that. There’s looting and people with guns out there, because this country is very poor and people are desperate.”
…
Pierre Jackson, who is desperate for medical help for his mother and sister who both have crushed legs, said: “We’ve been out here waiting for three days and three nights but nothing has been done for us. What should we do?”

Read the whole thing. As we have seen before, rescuing stricken people, bringing medical aid and food and water to them is no easy task; it’s not a snap of the fingers. It’s going to get much worse before it gets better over there...

There is something here that I just cannot get:

Groups of men with machetes roved the ruins seeking supplies of food or water; others used corpses as roadblocks, a macabre sign that the capital had reached breaking point after four days of apocalyptic scenes. "They are scavenging everything. What can you do?" Michel Legros, 53, told AP as he waited for help to search for seven of relatives buried in his collapsed house.

You're mad because aid isn't reaching you in a timely fashion (and it's just not, that's true), so to show your displeasure at this, you block the roads with dead bodies, preventing any further aid from getting through to your neighborhood. Very astute fashion of making a political point.
And at this time of crisis, making a political point is so very, very vital, isn't it?

That's probably what most of us are thinking. We just don't get it. And yes, it's wrong; it's counterproductive, it's cutting off your nose and gouging out your eyes to spite your face, it's punishing innocent victims and probably causing more deaths.

But you know what else I do not get? I do not get what it's like to grow up in a country where ten percent of the population are orphans, where half the population is illiterate, where perhaps as many as five percent of the population is suddenly, drastically, brutally dead, their bodies rotting in your streets and under the collapsed buildings all around you, with no clean water, no shelter, no treatment available for crushed limbs, internal injuries, or even cuts and scrapes. I do not know how many kinds of crazy it might make me to listen to my family screaming for help until they die while trapped beneath a building I cannot move and there is nobody to help me.
I hope it would not make me that crazy. But then, I come from a totally different foundation.

What sorts of diseases will start showing up now. It's pretty grim.

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