Let's be honest, Katrina doesn't come close, not even in the same ballpark to the earthquake in Haiti. And to be brutally honest, to the point of being a bastard, I never felt truly sorry for Katrina victims that chose to stay. Why? Because staying in a city that's below sea level with a hurricane coming (mind you, you can see a hurricane coming from a week away) is pretty much the definition of stupidity. Oh, and Katrina happened in the U.S. and despite the aftermath, people were quickly, for a bureaucracy, shipped out of ground zero to better shelter. The U.S. has infrastructure, Haiti doesn't. Which brings me to my point, and to quote myself from recent conversations, Haiti was a (crap) country to begin with, and that is why I feel terribly for them.
Here's an article that mirrors my feelings. I'm rather pessimistic about the whole thing, it's not like countries haven't tried to help. Goodness knows, we've messed with their politics and shipped tons of money there. We can't ship them to Houston and give them debit cards. I fear that Haiti will emerge worse off than before, with political officials pocketing the insane amount of aid money (let's be honest, our country kicks major ass: $300+ million dollars) and local gangs hording supplies a la Blindness.
I hope that it ends up being Etch-a-Sketch Haiti and the country rebuilds into something better. Here's to the future.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Haiti
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I agree with both the Kartina thing and the Haiti thing. I actually stopped reading articles about it because it is truly depressing. But, there is always hope for a new beginning.
BTW, miss you guys. As soon as this economy turns around, we would like to come visit.
Coming from tornado country, I've always been frustrated by hurricane country people who don't seem to get it and ignore their weeks' worth of warnings...
And earthquakes are even worse than tornadoes and even hurricanes because of the type and extent of the damage. As you say, Haiti was a country in trouble to begin with (even the presidential palace wasn't built to any real kind of code?!) and their relationship with their nearest neighbor is iffy at best. Sigh. It's hard to keep hearing about it, and not hear much good news (though there was one guy rescued yesterday after 11 days and the official search/rescue operation was suspended...) But I'm with you in hoping that it rebuilds better than before.
P.S.
So I was reading on the church's news site that "all of the Church's meetinghouses in Haiti have been left largely undamaged..." - do you think that's because the church followed it's own building code to construct them (instead of "whatever" non-code that the rest of Haiti was using...)?
I will say that the Church's presence in the aid effort is probably the biggest hope-generating factor for me...
Anyway... just thinking 'bout it some more.
One major problem with your rant, Joe.... Blindness? Seriously, you saw that movie? =)
I prefer the desciptions of poo filled hallways from the book that the movie just didn't do justice to.
Um, Joe? Your blog is collecting dust. Just thought you'd like to know.
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