by Anna Kunnecke
I have been reading about the devastation in Haiti, and it's so huge that I can't even wrap my mind around it. I tend to enter into understanding through the chink of my own experience, so my mind has been turning again and again to 1995, when I was a senior in high school and a massive earthquake hit Kobe, Japan.
While Haiti feels impossibly far away, Kobe was maddeningly close to Tokyo, and yet we were similarly helpless. TV reports were filled with stories of relief workers stymied by crumpled roads. We could see footage of people lined up for food, but there was no way of getting it there. One salaryman took the day off work to make hundreds of onigiri, the flavored rice balls that are a nourishing, transportable meal. I don't know if he ever got them to the people who were really hungry.
Months after the earthquake, the city was still in crisis, and it came about that my high school class traveled by bus to help with ongoing relief efforts. 30 seventeen-year-old foreigners are nobody's dream team, but we were eager to help...if also eager for an adventure. We sobered up pretty quickly as we saw collapsed highways and buildings with an entire wall sheared off. We passed intimate spaces pried open to the world: tables set with dishes, beds that people were still sleeping in, a bookshelf stuffed with comics now stained by rain and soot. We performed the most menial of tasks--shoveled ditches, trundled around relief packets, chopped endless pounds of potatoes and carrots for the cauldrons of stew that were cooked and served every day. Such meager help. What I still feel today is the shame of the old dignified ladies who sidled up to me and asked for packets of tissues and clean underwear.
That trip surely helped us students more than it did the people we went to serve. This is the irony of going to a place to 'help'--it would have been most effective, in terms of efficiency, to take the money it took to transport and feed all thirty of us and our chaperones and simply donate it to the city of Kobe. But because we went there young and open, we were entangled in the reality of the ruined city in a way that was irreplaceable. 'Earthquake' will forever mean to me something more visceral, more human, and more sad than any story I've ever seen on a screen. So a part of me is awake as I think about Haiti. I'll send money to relief organizations, because I don't know how else to help. But I will also send up prayers, though I am not a religious person. I mourn with them. I don't believe this is self-indulgent. I am not the only person who feels a personal chord vibrate to the tragedy of Haiti, and it's that vibration, that empathy, that moves us to step outside our comfort zone and try to be useful wherever we are.
I have been reading about the devastation in Haiti, and it's so huge that I can't even wrap my mind around it. I tend to enter into understanding through the chink of my own experience, so my mind has been turning again and again to 1995, when I was a senior in high school and a massive earthquake hit Kobe, Japan.
While Haiti feels impossibly far away, Kobe was maddeningly close to Tokyo, and yet we were similarly helpless. TV reports were filled with stories of relief workers stymied by crumpled roads. We could see footage of people lined up for food, but there was no way of getting it there. One salaryman took the day off work to make hundreds of onigiri, the flavored rice balls that are a nourishing, transportable meal. I don't know if he ever got them to the people who were really hungry.
Months after the earthquake, the city was still in crisis, and it came about that my high school class traveled by bus to help with ongoing relief efforts. 30 seventeen-year-old foreigners are nobody's dream team, but we were eager to help...if also eager for an adventure. We sobered up pretty quickly as we saw collapsed highways and buildings with an entire wall sheared off. We passed intimate spaces pried open to the world: tables set with dishes, beds that people were still sleeping in, a bookshelf stuffed with comics now stained by rain and soot. We performed the most menial of tasks--shoveled ditches, trundled around relief packets, chopped endless pounds of potatoes and carrots for the cauldrons of stew that were cooked and served every day. Such meager help. What I still feel today is the shame of the old dignified ladies who sidled up to me and asked for packets of tissues and clean underwear.
That trip surely helped us students more than it did the people we went to serve. This is the irony of going to a place to 'help'--it would have been most effective, in terms of efficiency, to take the money it took to transport and feed all thirty of us and our chaperones and simply donate it to the city of Kobe. But because we went there young and open, we were entangled in the reality of the ruined city in a way that was irreplaceable. 'Earthquake' will forever mean to me something more visceral, more human, and more sad than any story I've ever seen on a screen. So a part of me is awake as I think about Haiti. I'll send money to relief organizations, because I don't know how else to help. But I will also send up prayers, though I am not a religious person. I mourn with them. I don't believe this is self-indulgent. I am not the only person who feels a personal chord vibrate to the tragedy of Haiti, and it's that vibration, that empathy, that moves us to step outside our comfort zone and try to be useful wherever we are.
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