Who will Pat Robertson blame this one on?
Should we start a wagering pool?
Our friend is going to Haiti to live on the streets with her six-year-old daughter who isn't allowed out of Haiti to live with her mother and stepfather here. Every provision they've managed to make for the child has fallen apart in the continuing chaos. The very day her stepfather had finally managed to get into Haiti to bring her to the U.S. the so-called Idaho missionaries got arrested for planning to take Haitian children to the Dominican Republic to live in a non-existant orphanage-resort. No Haitian children allowed out at all.
Daughter's papers all destroyed, so though he had all the papers to prove his identity and his wife's identity, there was nothing to prove K's identity. M. has spent all his money, over %50,000 on the attempt to care for her. But the upshot is she's on the street, dirty and starving and in danger from all kinds of predators.
Her mother is so distraught that she's going on the 10th to be there and protect her child. She's a true warrior -- we've been friends since she married M and came here -- and she will protect K. From all accounts her daughter resembles her in this way -- but she's only six!
All their friends have been trying to provide help from every angle we can. Again I am humbled because people from the SF/F community have started to send me money as part of their contribution to the Rescue K Fund. M. will need it, for the phone, food, clothes, shelter, water.
The constant clashes of the xtians who are taking this catastrophe as their opportunity to defeat witchcraft vodou by denying water, food, shelter and medical care to vodoussants is making the chaos worse. Further, they are not so subtly encouraging surrogats to turn machetes on the vodoussants. These are the actions that make for civil war. Further these xtians are clashing with each other over control of supplies and locations
Makes you sick, doesn't it?
No wonder this mother is determined to go there herself to protect her daughter with her own body if necessary until we can somehow manage to get her into the U.S.
And this is only a single story out of tens of thousands of children in Haiti -- not to mention around the world.
When the situation is so vast only indviduals get saved. There is no fair, honest and non-exploitive system to save the lost children in the world.
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7 comments:
Matthew Arnold said it best: Ignorant armies clash by night. And the case of Haiti, shed only more darkness.
One of the most despicable features of the modern world is the way that some people and groups use a natural disaster to advance their own agendas.
It feels progressively more that we are attempting to save the shrinking spaces of light on the progressively darkling plain, doesn't it?
I feel it more so because of this awareness that got so clear to me post K that we can only help some, those who get helped most and best are those with the friends, the right friends, who have other friends, who have connections.
And it Just. Is. Not. Fair.
But I'm so glad this child will be rescued, and that my friends, because they know me, are willing to contribute to that.
So that's what we do, and that's part of defending our shrinking places of light on the ever-larger darkling plain.
Love, C.
I get frustrated and sad, too. But I deal with it by reminding myself that there's only so much one person can do. The main thing is to be comfortable with the view in the mirror when you get up in the morning.
What still gets me angry, though, are the Rush Limbaughs who sneer at catastrophe, make snide remarks, and generally rationalize and foment inhumane behavior among their flocks.
I would be delighted to see the limburgers of this time and place waterboarded for about, o, say, a hundred hours, and then hung by their thumbs over an earthquake chasm, preferably in the company of Pat Robertson, who can preach sermons of comfort while they hang.
Love, C.
Additionally I am concerned at how easily a person could begin to enjoy 'playing god,' to people whose lives are fields of devastation through no fault of their own.
I don't think we or our friends are in likely danger of this: we don't have the extent of resources and power that would allow us free range of picking and choosing where and when and who to help. But some people do.
I dunno. I may be just blithering here.
Love, C.
That would be too kind a fate to the Limburgers of the world. They should be stripped of all they own (including clothing), tongues cut out, and required to wander the devastated streets of Haiti.
Wow, T!
This is part of why you are such an attractive person to know. You are in love with beauty, you this unique eye for spying beauty, your sense of color is superb, you are nurturing with food and comforts.
And then you come along with an observation of this nature.
Let no one EVER mistake you for a sweetie pie, evah!
You are terrific!
Love, C.
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