We can all help the Haitians

I have been fixated on the Haiti disaster.
Watching the stories pour across my computer hour after hour and the news channels on television, I can’t even begin to comprehend the level of disaster and loss of life. New numbers are posted regularly of the loss of life and the number of missing Canadians in that country.
As I sit in my easy chair, I feel a sense of guilt. As a Canadian, we are secure with a strong government, good health care, quality education and great infrastructure. Even in disaster, we have the ability to assist each other. In Haiti none of that exists and that has lead to making this crisis even greater.
I want to pat all those volunteers and rescuers who have been sent by their countries to that island that has lead such a tragic existence. Poor government, corruption, hurricanes have wrecked the nation. Now the earthquake is showing how tragically poor this nation is.
And the world is learning, that with all the technology available we can witness first hand the tragedies, the deaths, and the desperation, in the comfort of our living room. Meanwhile “Doctors without Borders” using civil war tools are working around the clock to save lives. Not a comforting thought for the hundreds having amputations.
Without anesthetics, in make shift surgeries, limbs are being amputated.
Bodies are being collected, not individually in body bags, but by the bucket loads of frontend loaders and then are being dropped in mass graves. Families will never know where their relatives are buried.
Even the ability to get to Port-au-Prince has been reduced. The single runway is now jammed. The highways leading into the city are all but impassable. The wharves have been damaged so ships cannot even land with supplies.
Since the coups of the 1990’s Canada’s police forces have been working to train Haitian police and help create a stable non-corrupt police force. The United Nations has been overseeing the training and development of an improved civil service. All those efforts disappeared in a few minutes. The government and its civil service disappeared.
Canada has responded by sending ships, aircraft, supplies, and 2000 military personnel. Canadians have responded by digging into their wallets and raising funds that are matched by the Canadian government.
I made a donation. A study lead by Dr. Jorge Moll of the National Institutes of Health found that when a person was encouraged to give money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasure like eating.
The donation helped ease some of my guilt for feeling so fortunate. Just as the community responded to Family and Children’s Services assistance for Pikangicum First Nation and we all felt better. As a community we can respond to Haiti. We might even think about opening our doors to families from Haiti as we did for people from Viet Nam.
This week’s crisis in Haiti will be followed by another crisis somewhere else in the world and our attention will be diverted.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher