How do you explain Haiti?
What do you do with that country’s history? Its savage beginning, its decade after decade of misgovernment if not dictatorship, its grinding poverty along with one hurricane after another.
And now this:
Dawn brought horrible scenes to light in Haiti’s capital on Wednesday: piles of disintegrated concrete, with limbs sticking out and muffled cries emanating from deep inside; wounded people staggering through the streets; and bodies littering the landscape.
Huge swaths of Port-au-Prince lay in ruins, and thousands of people were feared dead in the rubble of government buildings, foreign aid headquarters and shantytowns that collapsed a day earlier in a powerful earthquake.
The Haitian president, René Préval, told The Miami Herald that the toll was “unimaginable” and estimated that thousands had died. Among those feared dead were the chief of the United Nations mission in Haiti and Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval was quoted as saying. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”
Haiti sits on a large fault that has caused catastrophic quakes in the past, but this one was described as among the most powerful to hit the region. The earthquake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years and left the country in a shambles, without electricity or phone service, tangling efforts to provide relief to an estimated 3 million people who the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said had been affected by the quake.
I’ve seen reports that the death toll could climb into the hundreds of thousands. The President has committed this country to doing whatever is necessary to help.
So how to explain Haiti? Right now, you don’t. First thing you do is pray. Then you do what you can to help and here’s a few places where you can do that:
Episcopal Relief and Development – Yeah. Because now’s not the time to make theological points.
Anglican Relief and Development
Food for the Poor – If the Anchoress recommends it, that’s all I need to know.
Catholic Relief Services
American Jewish World Service
Salvation Army
If you know of any other good ones, please include links to them in the comments.
UPDATE: Here are a couple more I should have remembered.
Samaritan’s Purse
World Vision -
