Today, I saw on the Twitterfeed a link to a blog post by Capt. Tom Negus, commander of the Bataan Amphibious Relief Mission in which he breaks down the data on a graph detailing relief supplies in Haiti since the day of the Earthquake over two months ago. The graph has a huge spike then trickles down to nothing after February 20th. If I read things correctly, that drop off is because NGO’s picked up the work, leaving the U.S. Navy to take care of other issues.
Granted, it made me think of what I wrote a month ago about how we move so fast in this culture that by now, most of us don’t give much thought to Haiti. If we are honest, most of us never did until it was nearly destroyed. I imagine the same is true of Chile. This isn’t a guilt trip. This is just me admitting how much I’ve been preoccupied with too many other things that Haiti hasn’t entered my mind. But then there is that graph. And there is this picture by Jeremy Cowart on his Haiti relief page called Voices of Haiti, Day 16 in which man his holding a folded piece of paper with the words in French, ”You learn to walk by falling.” This is from a series of photos Jeremy took while in Haiti, a series in which each of the people photographed wrote what they wanted to say on whatever was closest at hand as he snapped the shot.
Prints For Haiti is just one of the many ways people are creatively still trying to help. To modernize Donne, “No Site is an Island.”