Only months after forgotten disaster: Haiti

I.

It seems it must be more time. It is mere months after their disaster: Haitians deserve not to be forgotten by the world. But an excuse is not for any nation or individual to give: Why have all our efforts efforts have not done enough for Haiti? We are all responsible. There is no excuse left for any one of us: We are all responsible to act.

What have we done to change the suffering of Haitians? What do we know how to do?

Our efforts for Haiti are for our whole humanity. What we do for the least among us reflects on our entire human ethic: frail, incomplete, resolute, impossible, merciful, self-interested.

Even our poorest nations (maybe more importantly our poorest nations) should be treated with equality, respect and dignity as our world finally decides once and for certain if we are all to be judged together: integral, decent, connected, dependent by standards of international solidarity.

The case of Haiti's disaster was a result of legacies of colonialism and geographic centralization by monopolies of capitalism and military industrial complex. Our response and quorums to restore nature and humanity for Haiti matched the call for equity in the rebuilding of our City of New Orleans healthfully, holistically, with an engaged and empowered population of democratically governed five years previously. Haiti gives us a positive reason to reevaluate strategies and opportunities for implementation of more humanistic and scientific responses to disaster: the standards which we mete out in Haiti really are our minimum respect for our humanity.

II.

Disaster is an opportunity which can benefit corporations, government, people, and/or the environment. It is past time we began treating it as such. While on the one hand Naomi Klein and Naomi Zack both painted true portraits of the political and corporate backing for philosophies of planned responses to disaster (which, incidentally, got the USA into our current roles on the Gulf Coast, after Haiti, or in Afghanistan/Iraq theaters of war).

Taken positively, there is are some possible positive interpretations of the quality of world reaction to disaster which says that disaster offers us the chance to see our common self interests, how they are connected, and ACT.

In her analysis of Disaster Capitalism Klein points correctly to the ways governments have behaved and used disaster to push through unpopular economic plans. This news, taken together with the consistent failure to establish recent protocols and new global conferences and it may be fair to argue that we have come away with little results from the pressing changes of our climate.

However, the world has a consciousness dilemma which can potentially be an arbiter of change using the same terms described by Klein and Zack. If communities are organized for participation, engagement, and, as possible, for local controls and decision-making, disasters (whether they occur to us or effect us from around the globe) may be arbiters of good sense and positive actions. [The same agent of change used for enormous economic and political change can become an agent for local change, local governance, and/or change of personal or communal responsibility.]

The nations are still not together; (Copenhagen 2009), it is still obvious that any of our recent disasters point to unwillingness, either by our planetary orb or its people, to any longer accept either individually self-interested motivation of nations; or, world's unrelenting environmental changes that demand new actions and world multinational endeavors be cooperative.

III.

What we are doing from where we are today and on our trip? What do we know that we can share with Haitians? What are the actions we know of now which make positive changes occur?

Raising awareness...acting constantly
Supporting local actions, dignity, and participation-based engagement of communities
Acting to reduce global inequity
Acting to reduce environmental degradation
Purchasing fair trade products
Support macroeconomic benefits for human restoration in disaster
Shrinking our carbon footprint
Blogging about our Actions (for Haiti)
Supporting businesses that benefit poor countries economies

We want to continue discussing disasters, how they happen, how they are mitigated, how to prevent them, how to use them for good.

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Creating and implementing service programs

Creating and implementing service programs that are sustainable at home and abroad...

When we travel, we want to be at our best; and, we want to have our eyes wide open. To be sponges of interest and dynamism, to represent with confidence, humility, and genteel ambassadorship the best of the places we are from. We want to take in new cultures, habits, and customs; while not being unduly harsh and/or not accepting of the quirks and contrasts which are new to us.

But, if we are traveling with a sense of service, exchange, and equitability of economy or position, we may also want to use our skill sets, our interests, our profession, our social skills and ambitions for the benefit of the people we are visiting (and, thus, in turn, for ourselves). As experienced and ostensibly benevolent minded travelers, Brittany and I set off for our 10 month ’honey service year’ with the ambition of service right smack in the middle of our highest aspirations. We made a point in our wedding registry to include an option of donations to go towards projects we would find of the highest merit as we traveled.

The truth is, we have found some wonderful organizations - some formal, some informal - doing work in different arenas range. As anyone who knows us might suspect, we also build more informed critiques of NGO’s in general; mainly from perspectives of provenance, utility and sustainability.

Setting up sustainable programs that are sensible and beneficial to the community we come from, to the community we are exchanging with and/or to ourselves as individuals depends on many factors. How long do we plan to work or collaborate on the project. Is our local partner informed and willing to participate as needed. What is the long term ownership management potential for comprehensive oversight and growth. How necessary is the project? What are expected or unpredictable mitigation issues for damages and challenges of the project? How will financing be sustained and initiated? Is this a highest best use project for limited resources? How can our project partner, collaborate, exchange and reproduce in other ways?

There are infinite good program development possibilities brought on by cultural and multinational exchange. New ones arise daily. While possibilities are endless, fine tuning projects to match the culture sensibilities, timeliness, and appropriateness of countries we visit is equally confounding and inexact. Oftentimes, due to our backgrounds, we see project possibilities in government/civic collaborations, NGO/Non-profit, and community participation and engagement. Those with different backgrounds and expectations will have other challenges, dreams, and possibilities. We all have a responsibility to act.

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The African/Asian Universal Understanding

written by Nathan

In Asia and Africa, life is based on a fuller sense of universal understanding. Each is different, complex, and individualistic by interpretation. Each is complete in itself. Taken together, however, these universal belief systems and acculturations demonstrate core human values which we are all affected by. 

In China, we gained first hand appreciation of the wisdom of Chinese peaceful social cultural norms and their power to organize and direct large populations. The grace of Chinese interactions can be seen in its tea ceremony. The commonality of life’s necessity can be understood in a common enjoyment of green tea. 

Chairman Mao famously wrote proverbs including many which still are present in the work and family edicts of the Chinese. “A man tells his sons one morning: Sons, I cannot move this mountain alone with my hoe; but, together we can move this mountain.” And, they did. We have met many peoples who planted trees with the idea that they would never know its majesty, but that their grandchildren could enjoy the tree. And, the tree lives a thousand or two-thousand years and is used by a village and is revered. 

India balances China’s productivity with its long history of political reason and discourse. Much influence of British rule left many lingering educational influences. It is a gentler land of equitable dignity with total inequity of power. 

In India, Ghandi’s generation left a legacy of peaceful democracy. Both countries have had the least enfranchised benefit in socialist, capitalist, and communist forms. Both have newly combined wealth, existing powers, corporate military industrial complexes, democratic educational systems, raising enormous new middle-classes. All of these leave their marks as mass physical appropriation of resources accelerates. 

In Ethiopia, there is a mesh of peaceful religions. there is a pathway to families of shepherds and priests. Impacts on the 19th to 21st centuries are less. Religious belief is everywhere. Yet, Ethiopia experiences Africa’s history of ‘development through total impoverishment’ by behaving in acts of colonialism on its neighbors and its own diverse populations. The largest natural and human disasters here are entirely preventable, yet persistent. But, their overarching philosophies carry only worry from growing season to dry season and from day to day. 

Ethiopia being Africa balances the Asian history with its own biblical ages…history again stretches into sandy footsteps of time. Instead of social or economic capital, Ethiopia has practical experience and righteousness, carried with the pride of a lion heart. 

There are modern dilemmas facing all these grand countries that each hold origins and histories of the world. Each has been affected by dangerous physical development. Each has vowed to create a healthier, more sustainable natural world. All are vastly different. 

Ethiopia, India, and China need plans to achieve cleaner development while also increasing their living standards. What they don’t need are lectures on social thought or universal understanding. 

If we could mesh the economic power of unified China, the common cause and social decency of India, the proven spiritual agedness of Africa, with the practicality and rationality of the western mind, perhaps we could produce cleaner thoughts and science. 

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