Haiti
When disaster on this scale strikes I'm humbled and shocked and horrified. When disaster on this scale strikes again on the news at 6, then on the news at 8, then on the news at 10, then on the late night news at 12:30 the shock ahh starts to feel a little less shocking. Bless the mainstream media channels and their repeated 30 second disaster clips detailing all we need to know for discussion around the water cooler. Bless them for turning the pain of thousands into a viewer ratings smash. As disenchanted as I am with the media these days there are blissfully some publications out there that try to go beyond the headline grabbing stories to bring us small pictures of the individual lives that have been altered forever in such a tragic and unforeseeable way.
My nearly six foot tall twenty two year old cousin - the beauty queen we nicknamed Naomi Campbell - who says that she is hungry and has been sleeping in bushes with dead bodies nearby, stops me.
'Don't cry,' she says. 'This is life.'
'No it's not life,' I say. 'Or is should not be.'
'It is,' she insists. 'That' what it is. And life, like death, lasts only yon ti moman.' Only a little while.
-Edwidge Danticat
The New Yorker FEB 1, 2010
Posted in: on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at at 9:18 AM
