Nuisances and disasters

Last Friday afternoon, the refrigerator died.   There was no special noise or warning, not even the ghost of a whimper, just a spreading puddle that was at first confused with one coming from the dishes that had recently been on the draining board.  I wiped the puddle up with some paper towels, packed up the chicken sauce and steamed couscous destined to be reheated Saturday evening for an early-bird birthday celebration for Big T (#1 Son) and headed to DC for the weekend.  Big T will be 44 in just a few days, but I will be on the other side of The Pond.

All weekend I made merry, blissfully unaware that HWMBO would realize the full consequences of our appliance's demise while I was spending time with family, including the youngest grandbaby, over the weekend.  My unfortunate spouse was kind enough not to give me the news until I returned late Sunday afternoon.  Ironically, the weather, which would have been cold enough to preserve frozen goods only a few days earlier, has taken a moderate turn and so what couldn't be eaten immediately was generally spoiled.   Last weekend, a three-day weekend including the MLK Jr holiday, was also a difficult time to find a repairman who would come.  One finally did around six pm Monday.   He decided that our currently defunct refrigerator could be resuscitated with a new compressor (all told, an expense of around USD 450), but it needed to be ordered and thus could not be installed before next Monday.

So now we are making do with ice chests and minimal quantities of fresh foods.  Our "roughing it" is merely a slowing-down of life and expectations, hardly a disaster and certainly not catastrophic, especially since we currently have no small children or worse, teenagers, around.  But even such a minimal nuisance makes one empathize even more with those hundreds of thousands in Haiti who have been deprived of everything, for whom life since last Tuesday will never be the same, for whom our situation would seem unimaginable luxury, and for whom there may never be healing.

Haiti has the horribly dubious distinction of being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  In no small part, this situation is due to meddling by various so-called superpowers who funded opposing groups there practically since Haiti proclaimed its independence from France on 1 January 1804, during the reign of Napoleon I (not Napoleon III, as infamously proclaimed recently by one rather ignorant, if not outright bonkers, US citizen).   This occurred after a successful slave revolt led by a former slave, Toussaint l'Ouverture.   One would think that the United States, itself the product of revolution against a European occupier, would have been a consistent champion of its near neighbor's independence.  But that has not exactly been the case.  After episodes of intervening in Haitian affairs during the 19th century, the US occupied Haiti in 1915, ultimately leaving in 1937 after establishing a border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic and leaving in place a financial system that siphoned Haiti's wealth to offshore creditors instead of reinvesting it in the Haitian economy.   From 1957 to 1986, the US either stood by or actively traded with and supported the notoriously nefarious Duvalier family whose regimes created the private army and terrorist death squads known as the Tonton Macoutes.  Finally, in 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected President, then overthrown in a coup in September 1991, and the country was ruled by a military dictatorship.  That situation eventually descended into chaos.  Aristide was reinstated in 1994 after a team led by former President Carter negotiated a departure of the coup leaders at the request of then-President Clinton.  Aristide completed his mandate in 1996, but was returned to power in 2000, only to be deposed again in 2004, and this time carried off to Africa in questionable circumstances by US Marines.  Such interminable turbulence was apparently not enough.  On 12 January 2010, the capital of this poor beleaguered nation was practically the epicenter of a 7.0 earthquake.

No human being with a conscience can fail to be touched by such palpable misery practically on our shores, on the island that may have been the first landing place for the Italian discoverer of the New World.  That unacceptable misery has endured for far too long.  It is my sincere dream that this terrible tragedy will remind us all of our common humanity and that some true and lasting good will result that will actually benefit our Haitian neighbors, instead of leaving them to languish and suffer as they have until now.

There are many excellent organizations that have been helping with relief efforts and that will continue to help.  Some are listed in the sidebar of sites that I like to visit.  I have heard some, albeit only a few, thank heavens, of my fellow citizens who believe that US foreign aid (apart from the current disaster assistance for which I must commend President Obama and all those who are assisting him in this commitment) to Haiti is, in and of itself, enough.  While I hate to burst their bubble, I suggest that they educate themselves on what the US actually "gives" as foreign aid, a large part of which goes toward military budgets rather than community and infrastructure development, to countries around the world.    Anyone who does not trust blogger or news outlet statistics can see for themselves here.