The world recently witnessed a major tragedy, a natural occurrence of catastrophic proportions that focused our feelings and mobilized our energies like nothing has since the last natural occurrence of catastrophic proportions. Humans are funny that way. The worst always seems to bring out the best.
With scenes of urban devastation blanketing the international airwaves, humanity reached out to Haitians with donations of food, medical supplies, financial aid, incredible offers of volunteerism, and an outpouring of love that could, and did, move mountains. In this case, mountains of rubble. But now that the initial shock is behind us, now that the visions of horror have turned to “been there, seen that”, and the chance of finding miracle survivors has all but disappeared, the question remains… How long will Haiti remain in our awareness?
No one seemed to focus on Haiti before the earthquake when it was merely the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere with a staggering unemployment rate and millions of people living in poverty. No newscaster ever commented on the fact that this tiny nation, with a population descended from freed and escaped slaves, remained mired in financial hardship because of the toll extracted by rich multi-national corporations and the dictatorial leaders kept in power by the powerful nations that were home to the rich corporations. And though the suffering was just as real, though less acute and more chronic, all of this remained beneath the radar. After all, graft, corruption, and exploitation are so much less photogenic than crying orphans and limbs sticking out from under tons of concrete.
So what will happen now? Dedicated relief workers, medical professionals, and proselytizing missionaries, many of whom were there all along, will no doubt remain and conscientiously continue to devote themselves to their particular version of saving the poor and downtrodden. Good work will continue to be done but in far less measure than the need calls for. As the days and weeks and months go by, piles of rubble will slowly be replaced by cardboard shanties with tin roofs. Starvation will mitigate to mere hunger, wailing will return to silent suffering, and the eyes of the world will return to half mile high towers in the middle of the desert, partisan squabbling in the halls of government, and golden awards given to the privileged and beautiful.
We will forget that we are not just our brother’s keeper, we are our brother. That the ‘I’ within each of us is the ‘I’ within all and the suffering of one is each of ours to experience. And so it shall remain, out of sight and out of mind, until the next time a catastrophe occurs and we once again get the opportunity to experience our true humanity.
peace……………ag
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