I'm Seeing Red....
Typically disclaimers appear in fine print at the bottom of documents. I want mine to appear right at the start of this blog in big, clear letters. I AM NOT AN EXPERT ON THE RED CROSS. I HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT THE RED CROSS IS DOING OR IS NOT DOING IN HAITI.”
Having said that, I am also sitting her wondering if the millions of people raising money for the Red Cross in Haiti should be adding that disclaimer to their reports as well. Yesterday I read some articles in our local newspapers outlining the efforts of various groups working hard to fund raise for Haiti’s relief effort. Each one ended with “all proceeds going to the Red Cross.” This spurred me on to the Internet to see what our National papers were covering. It was much of the same –many groups working to raise money for Haiti –“all proceeds going to the Red Cross.” Never knowing when to leave well enough alone, this compelled me to investigate my International Yahoo news site. What was no surprise to me by this point, were the endless reports of groups as small as one or two up to the colossal Hollywood celebrity machine all raising funds for Haiti and all bearing what had now become to me an eye flogging, monotonous mantra-like closing “all proceeds going to the Red Cross.”
It seemed like I had missed a some kind of profound movement or something. Had I been blind to what the whole world had figured out was the only way –the Red way to put Humpty Dumpty Haiti back together again? Were they some kind of magical maestros able to perform disaster relief feats of spellbinding proportions? My attention was captivated by what appeared to be a world wide congealing of focus favoring this one group with unrivalled devotion similar to that of the ancient apostles. Should I be getting my rose colored glasses on and getting in the Red parade?
Okay, anyone who really knows me knows I don’t own a pair of rose colored glasses. No, like my fellow PWPers, I choose to focus with the bare eyed glare of that stupid fish who is always swimming upstream against the flow. So, with the fire of desire lit to find the real deal I decided to revisit those same news sites that were fluffy full of fund raising initiatives for the Red Cross and so incongruously void of reports of what the Red Cross has accomplished with all this of cascade of manna. Looking at things bare eyed can get pretty sticky and dirty at times. So be forewarned that as we have a look at what I found set in between the myriad of songs being sung my the mass Red Cross Choir, much like that little word “sela” which is set here and there among the psalms to provoke a pausing for pensiveness, it might feel a little sticky and dirty on your bare eyes. If you do have a pair of rose colored glasses, you may want to put them on and go read something else.
Call me naive –simple –crazy even, (I dare you ) but I am thinking that with the massive efforts to get millions and millions of dollars to the Red Cross, wouldn’t we be hearing of the massive changes their utilizing of those dollars has brought to the crumbling chaos of the Haitian earthquake aftermath. I am not saying they haven’t done anything. I am saying I couldn’t find any news reports of what they have done. With them having the most moola, shouldn’t they have the most hoopla? Let me share a few quotes just from yesterday’s news from Haiti.
“There is an urgent need to boost significantly capacity on the ground, to improve coordination, strategic planning and provision of aid,” said Holmes. (U.N. top humanitarian aid official)
“Six weeks after the quake hit, the mission is still largely in an emergency response mode.”
“The distribution methods, Abelard added, are too slow to reach the hungry.”
“Relief officials have changed tact and are urging Haiti’s earthquake homeless to pack up their belongings return to their homes. A million people, or 10 percent of the population remain homeless, the bank reports.” (the homes they are being forced to return to are among the mass of rubble they escaped from to live in the refugee camps in the first place –non-italics mine)
We are expecting to see a lot of disease when we return in April, especially with the rain season coming.”
Along with the orphans, 200 injured refugees were sent to a Cap-Haitien hospital for medical treatment in the early days where they still remain.”
But as the quake dust settles and many exhausted surgeons leave for the comforts of home, it remains unclear what will become of the patients who have nowhere to go to recover –and not enough doctors to change their bandages or teach them how to walk with one leg.
More than a million people lost their houses in the quake. About half are living in tent cities that sprouted around the capital with no running water or reliable food supply, and that’s where many patients are winding up.”
“Food and nutrition experts in Haiti worry that cases like Witney’s, who died Wednesday of malnutrition complicated by pneumonia, will increase as the quake-battered country struggles to provide adequate shelter, potable water, and sanitary living conditions for tens of thousands of children living in camps.”
“When I leave here, I will go sleep on the streets, because I do not have anywhere to go,” said Thimo, a 50 year old former store clerk who is being treated at Love A Child village, a makeshift clinic run by Harvard University doctors near the border of the Dominican Republic. “When the international doctors leave here, I will die.”
Bottom line, bare eyed, sticky, dirty truth is that somehow, somewhere, a media flare went up during this crisis creating a rose colored shroud that has wrapped itself convincingly around millions who are in earnest raising funds for the Red Cross believing that “all donations going to the Red Cross” has, and still is, alleviating the suffering in Haiti. Like I touted in my disclaimer “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE RED CROSS IS DOING OR IS NOT DOING IN HAITI.” What I do know is not enough has happened in the right way through the right channels to even touch the pointy, caustic tip of the immeasurable iceberg of need in Haiti.
We have been fed a gobbly-gook soup of information to keep the dollars rolling in their direction in spite of the truth that the buck apparently has stopped somewhere along the disaster relief train track leaving the homeless, homeless, the hungry, hungry and the sick, sick. Somewhere there is a big, giant, Red caboose of aid money not building shelters, not rehabilitating the amputees, not distributing donated food, not clearing rubble etc. etc. –chugging along carrying the hard earned dollars of those giving “all proceeds to the Red Cross.”
I am not here to trash the Red Cross. Snuck in between the paragraphs of this blog, in what does seem like I am trashing the Red Cross, is a sweet little “sela smack” delivered with hope for you to pause pensively and ask yourself if what you see on the ground in Haiti today, is congruent with what you think 8 weeks of disaster relief millions-billions should have delivered. Ask yourself if you should change course and start swimming upstream, against the flow of aid all going in one direction. Ask yourself if, perhaps that old adage “if it seems too good to be true –it likely is” is applicable with what you will learn if you further research the news sites on your own. Ask yourself if it is time to toss out those rose colored glasses and break out the microscope to find a way to redirect a portion of “all the proceeds going to the Red Cross.”
Sela,
Julie
Posted on Saturday, February 27 2010, at 10:19 AM.