Haiti

An earthquake of all things---a damn fault line right under the world's poorest place. Of course, of course. Not even humans can be this cruel. Yet, like everything, I suppose, humans are Nature's byproduct, so in turn, not only can humans be that cruel, they are designed to do so.

A pessimistic outlook, I concur, but it's hard to think of it in other ways when something as shitty as this flops upon the news stand.

As a kid, Haiti was probably the poorest country I could recognize and only because a friend of the family had traveled there and he told me it was poor. “The poorest,” he said. So now, when I read that the Right Wing is concerned about their various military campaigns being sidetracked by the efforts to restore life to the poorest of people, it darkens the spirit of humanity.

People will always show their true selves in moral crossroads. The fierce Libertarian ethos of “leave me and my money out of your problems” is maddening in a situation like this.

Yet what am I doing about it? Texting Haiti to 90999 and feeling satisfied with myself? If I really believed in these words I would be standing in Haiti with a tool in my hand, complaining about my back and feeling really desperate for a beer. Instead, not only am I comfortably ranting on my laptop drinking a beer that is realistically more expensive than my lifestyle should allow, but drinking it out of a glass no less.

Perhaps the unreasonable fruitcakes that are overtly selfish are actually better people than the ones who agree that it sucks, then pretend they kind of want to get involved but never lift a finger, and eventually completely forget that it even happened eight months later. I still don't think that's true; mainly because I don't want to get grouped behind the Right Wing on the shittiest-demographic-during-a-crises list.

Still, Haiti has had it rough. Out of the Caribbean, it is the one place you don't want to visit. Every other place is known for its still very serious poverty but also its fun. Haiti is known for its dirt, and I only know that because of the first Fugees album.

And now they get clobbered with an earthquake. Just them; the nation it shares an island with, the Dominican Republic, was somehow not effected. I have miniscule to zero knowledge behind the science of seismology or epicenters, but, if nothing else, it seems giving Haiti an earthquake is like taking the New Jersey Nets' draft pick; there's no fairness involved.

That's the thing about this weird planet and this weird existence; it whimsically continues. As Nature's lead creation, we like to assume we have this life thing under control, and for the most part that's certainly the case, but every now and then something comes along that unexpectedly changes things and we're reminded of who's house this is.

I don't mean to say God, though you can take it like that if you're inclined to, but plate tectonics, for instance, is a hell of a thing. There's science that we seem to understand regarding how it all works, but we still don't have a very good handle about predicting when all that groaning and stretching takes place. The rub of it all, is the major damage it always invokes. There are forces on Earth that, from this day, seem uncontrollable and impossible to fully understand or predict, and these unknowns are as natural as mankind or any old tree.

What we can do about it all is instead of boosting up Haiti to return to its daily misery, we can work to make it a less shitty place to live by instituting social change that promotes sharing and a value on humanity rather than competing and a value on capitol---you knew this would turn into socialist rhetoric at some point.

Good luck, Haiti; may you survive better than before.


Mojokong---Internationally renown.