3 days ago
18 January 2010
"Fearfully waiting for the sun to rise"
Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat tells NPR she has not been able to reach most of her family in Haiti after last week's earthquake. The president of Haiti's chapter of the international writers' organization PEN and his wife are among the estimated 140,000 killed by the quake so far.
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It's too big to grasp, and TV imagaes of past disasters have blunted my sensibility. Only when something like this is personalized can I "get it."
This occurred two days ago. During the winter, I live on a Florida golf course. I walk my dog around six each morning, and as I neared the club's tennis courts, I saw one of the groundskeepers. He was turning on the floodlights over the courts, getting ready to blow off the night's accumulation of leaves. I know this man. He's in his late sixties or early seventies, still doing hard, physical work on behalf of people his age who have replaced work with full-time play.
I know he's Haitian. After greeting him, I asked if he had family back home. "Yes." Did any of them live in Port au Prince? "Some of them." I told him I hoped his family members would turn out to be OK. "No," he said, "I don't think so."
I later made a contribution online, but it made me feel small, a slacker.
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