I was going to go all philosophical and write about justice. Instead, I find myself tired and needing to get up early for work (here in Maryland – hooray for business trips). So instead I will share some facts about Haiti. I know, I know – it’s been a whole week. Forgive me, I care.

The quick and dirty summary is that every building in which I ever slept on my three trips to Haiti is now rubble – but the people I met seem to have survived. St. Joseph’s hospice in Port Au Prince fell down entirely. In Fondwa, both the guest house and the school are “a loss.” Fortunately, the orphanage sustained “minor damage,” and only one child was killed.

It’s becoming clear that while Port au Prince is in really rough shape – the rest of the country is going to quietly get the worse of it. The World Health Organization has designated Partners in Health to lead major portions of the medical response (hey, you’ve been here 25 years, you wanna drive?). The CDC is stepping in to provide some level of advice and support for the public health nightmare that is about to happen.

I’m still looking into whether it makes any sense at all to go down there. We’ve got a few contacts, and the consensus appears to be that unless you’re a trained emergency responder, a trauma surgeon, or someone with major construction skills – you might want to hold off for a few weeks.

Hell: Paul Farmer says it better than me.

I’m riding a clear, smooth yoga high. Went to the heated vinyassa class at Thrive, where I’ve been dropping in on the occasional class for the last three years. A really good session will yield at least one good insight that I can ponder through dinner. This one provided two:

1) In Judo training there are usually two roles: The Uke and the Tori. The tori does the technique, and the uke allows himself to be used for the technique. Being a good uke takes a lot of practice. You need to give yourself to the tori, but also protect yourself. You need to be flexible and go where you are put, but not simply flop or jump. You need to anticipate the technique to protect yourself, but not anticipate it so much that the tori learns bad habits.

In yoga, you are your own Uke. You relax and give yourself to yourself for the practice. All of this in a context where there is no fundamental “self” to point at. It’s tricky.

And the second is a bit odd, even for me:

2) During savastana (complete relaxation), one lays on the mat with eyes closed and releases the energy and tension from their body. I took the opportunity to do a mental exercise in which one dedicates any “merit” (whatever that might mean) to other people. I was specifically thinking of the folks in Haiti – but my mind broadened to a few people from work – to people suffering in other places – and generally to the world in a compassionate sort of way. At the same time I went through one of my preferred mantras:

So long as time and space remain
So long as sentient beings remain
So too may I remain
To ease the suffering of the world

As I settled into that mindset I felt, very distinctly, soft and ephemeral hands cradling the top of my head. It was an immensely comforting and reassuring feeling. I found that I could increase the sensation by broadening my mental gaze – which I did.

Realistically, it was probably just my hair drying out or something – but let me tell you – it was odd.

Had a good day. Here’s a bit of Haitian coverage that resonated with me:

Now that the international media is in finally in place, in a country that had a single American correspondent last week, Mr. Morse also used his Twitter feed to ask an important question:

Is this a one week story? Is this a 10 day story? is this a one month story?

What do you say? Toss ’em $5 through a text message, or fix the 200 year old mess? It’s up to us.

Here’s a note you don’t see every day:

Someone here at work called me to see if I have any connections to health providers in PAP because someone she works with just found out that her mother and brother are “dying in the street”.

Also, I caught a snippet on CNN of bodies being dumped in the bucket of a front end loader, and shifted into a mass grave. Even the normally impartial anchor felt moved to comment that it seemed “undignified.”

The second story on my news feeds is about “anger” over the massive bonuses paid to wall street executives:

The magnitude of the bonuses being paid this year, for work done in 2009, is unknown. But last year, the original nine banks and Wall Street firms receiving TARP funding paid out $33 billion in bonuses, even in the midst of the financial crisis, according to the New York attorney general.

I believe that some individuals on Wall Street made more, last year, in their bonuses, than we have currently promised as aid to Haiti. As an industry, at least, they got 330 fold the $100M we’ve promised in aid.

I don’t use the word lightly, but that’s a sin.

If my capacity for bullshit seems low today, that’s why.

I’m following updates from Haiti through people I know in addition to CNN. It lends a certain personal touch. These are people I’ve traveled with.

For example, we work with a Haitian doctor who recently completed a nice house for himself and his family. 

He and his family are safe, but have lost “everything.”

Here’s a bit that touched me. There’s more at the link.

Our 4th story apartment was one of the casualties. Sharyn had returned from teaching yesterday and was in the apartment for about an hour when the quake struck. Details are still difficult to write, but a wall and the ceiling (concrete) collapsed simultaneously. As they collapsed, she was thrown from her computer station and high backed office chair. The concrete slabs hit the chair which caused them to slide to the side rather than crushing her. She began to crawl toward an open space. About that time, another wall fell partially crushing her. Again there was some room to wiggle and she managed to continue to crawl toward open spaces as the building collapsed totally.

Eventually the 4 stories became a single story of rubble. She continued to crawl and eventually made it to the street. All told, perhaps 3 minutes.

Neighbors carried/ dragged her away from other buildings and walls. Eventually she went to a hospital that was overflowing and was given a couple aspirin—all they had for medicine. The hospital was closed shortly afterwards due to damage.

Here are the organizations that I’ve supported historically – and to whom I’m sending a bit of cash right now. and I budget for charitable giving, and we’re front loading the year with these donations. Basically, I’m making our planned donations through June, today. I think there’s a chance that the three organizations below can save lives if they have a few extra bucks right now.

I encourage you to do likewise.

Partners in Health. This is Paul Farmer’s group – they’ve been in Haiti for more than 25 years. Wherever possible, their clinics and services are Haitian requested, Haitian run, and staffed by a mix of Haitians and other volunteers. In other words, he’s building the capability of the country to help itself. Farmer is one of the smartest and most inspiring public health physicians alive today.

A PiH person was the first quote that I saw reported in the New York Times. By the time communications were back up, they had a makeshift clinic running and were sending urgent requests for bandages and pain medications.

Doctors without Borders (or MSF for the francophiles). These people are incredibly courageous physicians and nurses who sprint into the most dangerous places that the world can offer. They are so crazily risk insensitive that I will not travel with them. They are also in Haiti, right now, setting up clinics and so on.

Family Health Ministries: This is the group with whom I’ve traveled to Haiti several times. I know them personally, and trust them 100%. This is almost undoubtedly the group with whom I will wind up going there to help out.

I’m not personally a big a fan of the US Red Cross. It strikes me as too politicized, too beaurocratic, and too slow – especially right now. Perhaps the International Red Cross is better – I just don’t know.

Also, I hate having to say this, but there are already scammers and fraud artists using the Haitian catastrophe for their own enrichment. Double check your causes, and don’t forget to do your due diligence. Don’t get robbed when you think you’re doing a good thing.

“Doesn’t take much to rip us into pieces.” Little Earthquakes. Tori Amos

earthshine asked recently what I saw as the major barriers remaining between me and enlightenment. I answered, somewhat flippantly, “habituation.” A broad space encompassing the fact that, as an article I read recently put it, “there are no prison bars – only extremely strong habits.” The earthquake in Haiti has brought that front and center for me.

“What doesn’t bend breaks.” Buildings and bridges. Ani Difranco

The great yogis of old would go to the charnel grounds for their meditation. Bodies were brought there to decompose – to be fed to the carrion beasts. They would, when they thought they were comfortably detached from attachment to the illusions of the world, go there to sit and watch unvarnished reality.

“Look at this photograph.” Photograph. Nickelback.

My father has a saying – that unless you put a band-aid on a cut or otherwise seek medical attention, your body has no way to tell that it’s not in the middle ages. Haiti, right now, has very little way to tell that it’s not the middle ages. It is up to us to be that band-aid.

I’ve been looking at the pictures from the AP – thinking of the charnel grounds. Also looking back at my pictures from 2006 and the other trips.

What we see in Haiti right now is unvarnished reality. This is not an aberration. This is not God’s mistake. This is reality – as it exists unless we stand up for something better. When the Buddhists – we Buddhists – talk about the fundamental nature of reality being one of suffering and confusion, this is not an esoteric or complex claim. Look at the goddamn news.

“I’ve got no memory of anything at all.” I don’t remember. Peter Gabriel.

In a couple of months, this will be old news. Just like the still un-memorialized attacks of 2001 (and no, war does not count as a memorial). Just like New Orleans. Just like the tsunamis of southeast Asia. Just like just like just like. I’m filled with an urgency to do something, anything, right now. However I know that I’m no good with lifting concrete.

“If I’m not here, then you’re not here”. Hard to Make a Stand. Sheryl Crow

redmed has a friend who went to help shortly after 9/11. She describes her job there as “putting the left feet in the left foot box.” I’m not sure that I’m man enough to man the left foot box. I’m sure that I still run from unvarnished reality. Take me to the charnel grounds – I’ll vomit and flee. Port au Prince is averaging 90 degrees Fahrenheit during the day these days. Tomorrow will almost certainly be worse than today. Today the aid organizations had to count their own dead. Tomorrow, they will have to inhale the death of a city.

“Would I take the work out of the courage?” Grey Street. Dave Matthews Band

I’ve heard, from mcniadh and others, that there is value to clear eyed writing about this sort of thing. That my effort of going to the places and reporting on what I see is not a waste of time – even if all I manage to do is to bring back reports from places that most of you will not go.

Value to you or value to me? is a bright guy.

“Looking for light in the darkness of insanity”. What’s so funny ’bout peace love and understanding?. Elvis Costello.

So I look. I’m staring. I’m reading Pat Robertson’s crap – and tweets from survivors who are sleeping on the street again. Little heroes – the man who made it home in time to dig his wife out from the rubble of their home. Little horrors – the paraplegic woman who reported that she heard children crying in the collapsed house next door – for a while. She couldn’t move. Paraplegic, see.

“I never would have dreamed in a million years I’d see so many motherfuckin’ people who share the same same views as me.” White America. Eminem.

I got a couple of Penny arcade T-shirts over the holidays. I casually referred to them as “human detectors,” and I think that there’s more truth there than I expected. This writing is also a human detector. Are you out there?

“I think we were on the same boat, back in 1694.” Shame on You. Indigo Girls

“Lest we forget how fragile we are.” Fragile. Sting

Sleep is far from me. Enlightenment too. But I think I might be looking at reality, and that’s a start.

“You should be sleepin'”. Hammering in my head. Garbage.

If you were going to pick a spot for an earthquake, you would be hard pressed to select one worse than the Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port Au Prince. This is, perhaps, the poorest urban neighborhood, in the poorest city, in the poorest state in our hemisphere. It’s effectively a settlement built on the trash dump southwest of the capital. Society’s castoffs – material and human – all in a substantial pile on a hill just outside of town.

I’ve never actually been there. The closest I got was in 2006, when our driver decided to take a short-cut on the way out of town that would have cut across a corner of Cite Soleil. The other Haitians in the van started yelling at him and slapping him on the back of the head. “Les Blancs!” they were saying. I got the point that a van full of white folks was likely to be seen as a potentially lucrative target. We drove an extra half hour or so rather than cut that corner.

Other people with whom I’ve traveled described providing a medical clinic behind locked doors, and waiting at the end of the day for a quiet spell before boarding the van and hauling ass back to the safer parts of town. I’ve heard stories of people eating clay to fill the aching in their bellies.

cariaso tells me that this sounds typical of the third world slums he’s seen, and he’s been around the block a few times.

I had heard that things were a bit more stable lately. That the UN had succeeded in keeping the armed gangs in check for a couple of years. The last time I was in country, in 2008, I saw uniformed Haitian police openly patrolling the streets.

I know that we had helped to sponsor a clinic and a school that are (according to early reports), irreparable.

I’m guessing that we’ll never know how many people died in trash-slides last night. I will not be getting on a plane today. There’s no point. I have no skills that would be useful there today – and while the airport is apparently functional, the road from the airport into the city is “impassable.”

Paul Farmer might mention at this point that even if you don’t care about the human aspect – there is a real risk to the supply chain for cheaply made goods. However, I’m guessing that K-Mart and JC Penny will find other people to do their sewing for $0.12 per hour.

And here’s what the national palace looked like this morning:

At this point, everyone has heard about the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Port Au Prince yesterday. You all know that it leveled the UN headquarters, the National Palace, and the Ofatma hospital in Petionville. You’ve heard about how the quake struck at about 5pm, and then darkness settled over the city – except for sporadic fires along the coast. Perhaps you made it far enough in the article to read about the cries for help, echoing from under concrete fragments that used to be buildings.

Most likely, you don’t have much background on day to day life in that country. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve been there three times:

2006: Jen and I nervously got on a plane.
2007: We took my dad, and friend Tara.
2008: Jen was recovering from ankle surgery, so I went without friends or family.

I have no idea how to help. Getting on an airplane seems entirely pointless. I feel a sadness and helplessness that reminds me of watching the twin towers burn.

There is some data on my friends from Family Health Ministries. Sounds like the leapfrog to wireless communications is really something of a godsend.

Once again, I am incredibly humbled by the lengths that people will go to in support of this crazy idea of going down to help the people of Haiti.

I’m being intentionally a bit vague here – in case anyone is bending the rules on our behalf.

After a few phone calls, redmed and I were led into the basement of her hospital. Deep in the bowels – where blue smocked cooks move steaming vats of soup – and pallets of gauze and surgical supplies share the halls with crash carts and so on. We met The Man In Charge in his basement corner office. He had strong hands with a firm grip – looked us in the eyes and said “so you’re going to Haiti? We’ve got a room full of donated supplies. Come with me.”

He buzzed us into the back room, where pallets of boxes stood. He handed us a box cutter, and introduced us to one of his employees. “Take what you need, anything in here. It’s mixed, but all good. It’s being shipped once we can arrange it – but you need it now. God bless you for what you’re doing. This fellow will get it straightened up after you’re done.”

The thing that got me was that he was the one doing us a favor – and he was also the one thanking us. Somehow, the opportunity to help us was – for him – a big thing.

This is not how I usually live – but I think I like it here.