7.3

they’re saying make donations –

            saying you can send –

– send or lend –

       – your support –

your contribution –

          your –

your money –

          band aids –

          blood –

          tears –

          fears –

          your hope –

you can send them by

clicking here –

they’re saying in Port-au-Prince

the Presidential Palace has

made a mockery of this stolen

democracy.

the cracked walls, the imploded domes –

Toussaint, did you –

           did you see this?

if you could have seen this

           would you? –

would you have made history

anyway?

It’s as though the entire world crumbled three days ago. It took 24 hours for the situation in Haiti to sink in for me, and I can point to the stages of awareness that slowly settled into my heart and mind this past Tuesday. By Thursday evening I was a nervous wreck, terrified for the families of close friends here, for complete strangers, and for strangers who may as well be family on this small, small island. When your heart stretches out to another, and that heart to another and another, then “seven point three” become words of importance, and everything becomes personal.

Within the world of public health, which of course is the world to which most of my close friends and colleagues here belong, there has been an immediate rush to the border. I am heartened by the health care providers and others I know who have dropped everything to find a way, any way, to get to Port-au-Prince. Among these is a person very near and dear to me, and I find myself terrified also for this individual’s safety. It is positively eerie that on the Spanish-speaking side of this small, small island, my little neighborhood in the Zona Colonial remains as tranquil as ever (ok, tranquil for Santo Domingo), while just a few hours down the road to the west, utter chaos reigns.

In order to stave off tears, I email. I email and call and write and pray and try to find as many ways possible to do anything, everything that I can from the Spanish-speaking side of the border. Everything is personal now, and it’s as though the entire world shifted when those plates did their underwater dance off the southern coast of this small, small island.

Some people say this is no time for thinking about politics, but everything is political, especially those things that are personal. It’s difficult not to think about politics when the same earthquake, if located in California or Japan, wouldn’t have caused nearly the destruction it has wreaked in Port-au-Prince, Jacmel, and the surrounding areas. If only the buildings had been up to standard. If only Toussaint had failed, then maybe the smarting French wouldn’t have been quite so harsh as to demand reparations FROM their former slaves. If only the entire world hadn’t placed embargoes and discriminatory economic policies at Haiti’s doorstep for the past 200 years. If only Haiti had kept the money it paid for structural adjustment and predatory international loans and used it build things up to the standard the West claims as the minimum for its citizens’ protection. If only the buildings had been up to standard.

Frankly, I can’t think of a better time to think about politics than right now, especially because thinking and action go hand in hand, and if Haiti needs anything right now, it needs swift action. So when the dust settles and the dead are buried and the numbers and names go filing out onto the Internet and all our newspapers’ front pages, the question that has been burning in the back of all our brains will come spilling out – and what now???

How about bringing back a democratically-elected President whose promises of what Dr. Paul Farmer calls pragmatic solidarity were too intimidating for the “developed” world to swallow? How about treating Haitians as equal citizens of the “international community” instead of as hapless victims with a silent history? How about pursuing justice instead of economic development (and thereby avoiding what Naomi Klein has called the Shock Doctrine)? How about encouraging the spiritual and social growth of a people oppressed since the very birth of their nation? How about seeing this as one of the biggest wake-up calls in modern history? How about acting and acting and never stopping until we get to Justice?

When your heart stretches out to another, and that heart to another and another, then “seven point three” become words of importance, and everything becomes personal. Everything personal is political, and so could you please lend, in addition to your money, band aids, blood, tears, fears, and hope, your solidarity? Your love? Could you? Could you be loved, and be loved?