DISASTERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL
BY
JULIANNE MALVEAUX
It has been two weeks since a tsunami wreaked havoc on Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Somalia and other parts of the world. The number who perished nears 150,000 and is likely to exceed that. Millions have been displaced. The world has responded generously, some eagerly and compassionately, and others (including the United States) only after prodding. Money and sympathy have poured, though unevenly, to affected areas during this crisis. (For example, though parts of Africa, especially Somalia, were affected, there has been far less support for people there).
Images of large waves swallowing whole villages, and a rapidly deployed press corps that has told thousands of poignant stories help keep our sympathy and our attention focused on this tragedy. And the personal stories not only tug heartstrings, but also provoke series of questions.
I cannot get a woman out of my mind who, like many others, raced to high ground when she saw big waves coming toward her. She had two children, 4 and 2, and she carried them along with her, holding the hand of the older one, and carrying the younger on her back. She lifted her oldest child and settled him on a roof and turned around, and in that very brief moment, he was swept away by the wave. The other, on her back, was safe, if rattled, and after a futile attempt to save her older child, she kept climbing to higher ground with the younger one.
“I tried to hold on to both of them,” she mournfully told a reporter. “I tried very hard not to let go.” As I read her words I thought of that old gospel song, “Hold on, and don’t you let go”, a metaphor for holding on to faith, even in hard times. I thought of all the mothers, all over the world, who try to hold on to their children in the midst of chaos, in the middle of disasters, natural and unnatural. Mothers are holding on in South Africa, mothers and grandmothers, even as the AIDS epidemic decimates the population. Mothers are holding on, trying to shelter their children, in the face of violence in Iraq. Mothers are holding on, despite hunger, in much of the world, since 46 percent of the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day. Mothers hold on in inner cities in the United States even as children, wrong place, wrong time, are shot down by random bullets.
As heartened as I am by the outpouring of compassion for victims of the tsunami, I am also disturbed by the lack of compassion for others who hold on, trying not to let go. Colin Powell said he had seen nothing worse than the devastation in Indonesia, but he has been to Darfur, where hundreds of thousands have been killed, and more than a million displaced, and we heard no such pronouncement. I’m not suggesting that areas affected by disasters natural or unnatural compete in a pity sweepstakes for the world’s attention. But I am suggesting that we look at the selective nature of our compassion and the fact that we might spread it around a little more generously.
Instead, even in the face of the tsunami’s devastation, there has been scant mention of those African dead in Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia. There, at least several hundred are dead and more than fifty thousand homes have been affected. WE are compassionate toward those Asian dead, but have long been immune to feeling compassion for disasters in Africa. We have, after all, turned our backs on a raging AIDS epidemic, making grand pledges but barely following through. Colin Powell got defensive when UN Relief Agency chief Jan Egeland said our nation was stingy in its giving, but Egeland was on the mark. While the US is the world’s largest net contributor of foreign aid, we give about a third of a percent of our income, while the Dutch give 2.44 percent, Norway gives 1.49 percent, and Switzerland gives more than 1 percent. By objective measures we are more than stingy when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world.
Our stinginess is only compounded by our double standard toward dealing with African and dealing with the rest of the world. Because of the tsunami, many countries, including the United States, are considering debt relief for Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Canada led the way for suggesting a moratorium, or even a forgiveness of debt, just days after the tsunami hit. When an emergency aid summit of the Paris Club (19 creditor nations) met January 12 debt relief was one of the agenda items. Yet where is the discussion of debt relief for Africa, where nations forego spending on health and education in order to pay back interest on their debts? Iraq had $40 billion of foreign debt and interest repayments forgiven by the Paris Club in November, but the African situation remains unaddressed. Somehow we understand that the pressing needs revealed by the tsunami require a different approach to debt in Southeast Asia, but we have not figured out that the pressing needs from the AIDS epidemic in African might also call for similar measures.
If we believe that all human life has value, then we must believe in saving life and alleviating suffering whether that suffering comes from a tidal earthquake or from a health crisis. Yet the drama of the tsunami is far more compelling than the decimation of African population, and aid, debt forgiveness, and compassion flow away from those who have been buried, not under water, but under our indifference.