Double Trouble

The news that rocks the headlines right now or for that matter for over a week now is the earthquake that hit Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince with a magnitude of 7.0 on Tuesday, January 12th. The quake brought down buildings, power lines, and everything that could possibly be standing on the land leading to a major catastrophe for the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. It has been announced that 200,000 people are dead, 250,000 injured and made 1.5 million homeless and many more still remain unaccounted for. Haiti being a third-world country and people struggling for their day-to-day existence are further pushed back to face the hardship that the tremor crafted.


People who witnessed the incident had reported that a huge plume of dust and smoke rose up over the city within minutes of the quake. They saw a blanket of smoke and dust that completely covered the city and obscured it for about 20 minutes. They are many damaged buildings throughout the capital, including the president's residence and many structures that were leveled to the ground trapping thousands of lives, some still alive to be rescued and many dead. The tremor that lasted only a few minutes had created so much havoc and damages that people and volunteers from all over the world are still working through to sort it all out. Organizations like Red Cross and many are collecting donations in terms of much needed supplies like food, water and basic clothing and shelter to money to help the poor nation that just got poorer.


“jab bhagwan detha hai, chappar phad ke deta hai” is an old Hindi saying which roughly translates to “When God gives, He blows the roof off”, meaning He gives with an open heart. I am sure He gave trouble with an open heart to Haiti. The saying should be “jab bhagwan detha hai, sab phad deta hai” in this situation meaning “When He gives, He tares everything”. All that the people in Haiti are left with is the big hollow word ‘Hope’ that they would be rescued, that they would get food and water just to survive after losing everything that they owned or even people that they loved for that matter. “Time will heal” mentality is what will fill in the void. I will talk about this phrase in detail in the upcoming blog.


As people in Haiti were trying to figure out their present and future this past week, another aftershock of magnitude 6.1 shook the place this morning. When will these aftershocks stop? Will the people in Haiti get the time to at least grieve over their lost ones or will they be scurrying to save their own lives? People have to figure out where they would live, what they would eat or drink to survive in this mired situation. Oh sure; time does heal by giving more pain or bigger worries to deal with, that the present problem will look miniscule and not worth the pain.