We jumped on the wagon the second we heard about the earthquake in Haiti and the devastation there. There were lots of others on the wagon - literally hundreds of other NGO's from the United States were reaching out to help. There really is no limit to the generosity of Americans.
We had arranged to have 10 pallets of food and drinking water moved to LAX to be airlifted to Port au Prince. Then came a telephone call - an explanation that medical supplies had priority, and furthermore, the United Nations (with whom our partner was coordinating in Haiti) was not accepting any foodstuffs with an expiration date less than 1 year away. We took that to mean that they didn't expect to actually distribute our precious food within the next year. News footage confirmed our suspicions. The biggest hurdle in Haiti is distributing the food already available, not in getting the food to Haiti. So our donation never left our warehouse.
But, the crisis in Haiti is far from over. This will be a long-term effort - months, if not years in length. There will come a time when the attention of the national media wanes, the consciousness of the public fades, and the pandemonium at the Port au Prince airport dies down. And when that happens, we'll still be here. We are already undertaking making arrangements to move food to Haiti, but after the current panic abates.
In the meantime, the rains have started here in Southern California and in the Baja. An old joke is "It only rains ten inches a year here, but you don't want to be here the day it happens!" We got an inch or so yesterday, and expect several inches more starting this afternoon and through the rest of the week. When it rains in Baja, rural communities are literally cut off. Roads become impassable - if you're not where you want to be, too bad. The folks who sleep in the dirt find themselves sleeping in the mud, and there's nowhere dry to go. Shantys made of packing crates and cardboard offer scant shelter.
So, we're doing everything we can to get food down ASAP. We moved about 5,000# last Saturday, and expect to move another 8,000# tomorrow. Saturday will be a big day, as well; we've scheduled two of our larger missions for that day. One of the missions is on paved roads, so we'll be able to get food to them - the challenge will be to distribute the food once it's there. But the other is problematic - the orphanage is actually in suburban Tijuana, but on dirt roads. We'll just have to see if the roads remain passable.
There's a lesson in here somewhere. We need to keep an eye on the horizon, not just on our next step. Mexican orphans get hungry every day, not just during Christmas. And the crisis in Haiti will last far longer than the time the national news networks will allot to it. We tend to become inured to tragedy after the dust settles. But the need will continue on a day-to-day basis.
"There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deu 15:11
A 2,600 year-old lesson, and I'm still learning!
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