Haiti

Earthquake and death and destruction and devastation. When things like this happen, I normally pay attention to the news, to the net, to general relief work and what’s happening. But this time, I don’t know, I seem to have shied away from it. The blood, the carnage and the pain. Is it too much or do I just not know how to react anymore. The feeling of helplessness and not being able to make a difference. I will donate, but is that all I can do? Is that all we can do? Charities and relief workers are on the ground, yet a headline I caught announced that Haiti is still in desperate need of international help. So what else. Will the people like you and me be left to their own resources, or complete lack thereof, to rebuild their lives and put together some semblance of reality or conventional normality? All with dealing with the grief of losing loved ones.

Having pizza with a best friend yesterday, BBC News was playing on the flat screen. Like the tsunami, earth quakes of Pakistan and Gujarat, hurricane Katrina…all worse than a film. Ashamedly, I was glad that my back was to the screen. I looked at the plate in front of me, the scenes of people and normality around me and outside the window, and muttered Alhamdulillah under my breath, feeling it in my heart. God tests those whom he loves, and does not burden a soul with more than it can bear. And that why I’m the princess I am. Quite sad isn’t it. Quite a blessing.

When my best friend said to me yesterday, this is sad, but people die every day, in wars, in conflicts, thought hunger and famine, and nobody gives a damn. My response was that this was a natural disaster, a case of the earth and its inhabitants, and nobody has any control over this. It’s also indiscriminate; if you are in the wrong place, or country or city, at the wrong time, it really doesn’t matter how rich you are, or how much education you have, or status, or fame, or power. And consider the sheer scale of the effect, hundreds and thousands in an instant. Yes of course humans can cause the same level of destruction, and often have, but not often in one fell sweep. And in a human conflict, there will be two sides of the story (apart from maybe Palestine and some others!) and truth itself gets lost. And its continuous, what humans do, the pain and suffering they cause to other humans and the environment around them.

How can news teams reach an area but aid cant? And the same goes for human conflicts. Reports on Haiti are playing on the news right now. It can be so hard to understand.

I’m not one of those who believes that God did this because he was angry with the inhabitants of an area. It doesn’t quite convince me. Maybe it’s a reminder. Maybe it’s a test. Not just for those directly affected, but for the rest of the world. Maybe it’s something for us to question and ponder, but maybe never truly understand. We can’t even comprehend the sheer scale of it all.