Haiti, Continued
January 15th, 2010Blood Needed
According to news reports, there is a big need for blood donations after the Haiti earthquake. I’m going to see if they’ll have me. I don’t know if I can donate while I’m getting over a virus. I suppose everyone who reads this will already be aware of the need, but it can’t hurt to point it out.
My church is soliciting donations, but I didn’t know that when I heard about the quake. I always go to World Vision when I hear about a need like this. We are having some kind of prayer service tomorrow. I feel kind of useless because I’m still taking it pretty easy while the virus wears off.
It turns out the vast majority of the church is Haitian. I knew there were a lot of them there, but I wasn’t sure it was that big a segment. Maybe there will be a way for me to get involved, beyond prayer and donations.
It’s amazing how vulnerable people in certain countries are. They suffer terribly from problems that are easily avoided. In Africa, tiny children go blind all the time simply because their mothers don’t wash their faces. The Haitian tragedy could have been averted with rebar and adherence to building codes. We have a big problem with Haitians drowning in the Gulf Stream, because they get on overloaded boats without taking flotation devices and without learning to swim. How do you explain a thing like that? How can an adult do a thing like that in 2010? Cubans cross the Stream, too, but they usually bring fresh water and things that float. An empty gallon jug retrieved from Haiti’s inexhaustible supply of litter can keep you alive until someone spots you. It’s not like there is an economic barrier preventing people from taking basic steps to protect themselves.
One remarkable thing about the earthquake is that it killed people from other nations. If you go to Haiti as a charity worker, you may end up living in a structure that isn’t sound, so when an earthquake comes, you’re no better off than the locals. Where, then, are the relief workers staying today? I’d be happy to go over and help, but you couldn’t get me to sleep inside a Haitian building. You don’t have this problem when they get hurricanes and floods. An earthquake is worse. Aftershocks can keep killing after the main event.
Haiti is cursed. I don’t care who doesn’t believe it. I come from a place that is under a curse–a white rural ghetto that receives missionaries from other parts of America–and I am not afraid to say there are other places with the same problem. The only permanent answer to Haiti’s problems is the eradication of demon worship. The PC crowd doesn’t want to offend by mentioning the real problem. They’d rather shoot the messenger than acknowledge the cause of the suffering. I don’t care. In the end, they will not be my judges. They are enablers. I have no respect for their half-baked opinions. They’re wrong about everything else. This is just business as usual.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:01 PM
“How do you explain a thing like that? How can an adult do a thing like that in 2010?”
It’s called desperation Steve.
From what I have been reading the relief workers are sleeping in tents. A caretaker at a Haitian orphanage that a local church sponsors and his family have been sleeping in the street because they are afraid to sleep in the buildings. On the Today show yesterday Al Roker, Anne Curry and Brian Williams were at the airport standing in front of a small tent.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:51 PM
Desperation explains getting on a boat. It doesn’t explain failing to take rudimentary, obvious steps to prepare.
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When intelligent people persist in doing things that are clearly against common sense–in my opinion–it often indicates a spiritual cause. I think this explains the real estate bubble, among other things.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:12 PM
As I understand it – the lack of clean water is the number one problem throughout the Third World.
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I do always somewhat wry’ly note when a earthquake hits somewhere how its death toll matches up with the one in California’s bay area (what was that one – late ’80s?). What will be a couple dozen in the US will be thousands or tens of thousands elsewhere.
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A functional government generally operating under a mostly neutral rule of law is an amazing thing!
January 15th, 2010 at 5:32 PM
And desperation doesn’t explain never learning to swim when you live on a tropical island. Heck, I don’t even like to swim or go on boats, but I grew up in Miami, and my parents made sure I learned.
People are forgetting there are all kinds of demons, not just the obvious ones with little dolls and candles and ceremonies. There’s the demon of not thinking about tomorrow because “it’s enough to think about today.” There’s the demon of not planning for the future because “there is no future.” There’s the demon of thinking that someone else will take care of it when the time comes, whatever “it” is. These are some of the demons that inflict all sorts of places in the world, but they’re not obvious — people don’t cook up cool “religions” about them — so they have more victims.
January 16th, 2010 at 12:00 PM
I was in an earthquake years ago while living in Turkey – it was a mild one but it got everyone’s attention – what I remember is seeing the houses out the back window rolling up/down like boats floating on swells, then the lights went out – in storms you CAN run inside, even though the house may come down at a later point – in a ‘quake, you can NOT run away – it is all around you – I hope that help comes to those poor people quickly