ARTICLE - SHINING A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

SHINING A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
(Sydney Morning Herald) - Wokkapedia

I was watching Four Corners on Monday night.

It was a documentary on the plight of a baby called Landina, a survivor of Haiti's earthquake last year. Landina's brief life has been both curse and blessing. When the quake struck in January last year, she was in hospital after having received serious burns at her home. She was pulled from the rubble and, as fate would have it, treated at a field hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontiere.

One of the doctors was British surgeon David Nott. While he helped save her life, (though an arm had to be amputated) she in the months following changed his. He helped to have her flown to England — through the organisation Facing the World — for the surgery she needed. The child stayed with foster carers, and her mother, Marie Seignon, was tracked down in Haiti, living with her three other children in a slum. She was brought to England to be reunited with her child. But her mother had three other children, and was on her own. David Nott returned to Haiti to assess if conditions were suitable for Landina's return. His distress at what he saw was palpable. As he said in the program, he stepped outside his comfort zone to try to give a helpless child a chance at life.

My teenage daughter was watching the program with me. At one point Nott, having seen pigs rooting around for food in vile sewage waterways next to food markets, then visited a hospital.

He was appalled. It was dire. Landina would have little hope if she had to be treated there. Other children, however, had no choice. The dearth of equipment and the lack of hygiene and staff made it a health nightmare. Yet there were the children, not knowing how bad it was, not knowing anything really. But we knew. We could see and hear from thousands of kilometres away how bad it was. They were helpless. It was deeply affecting and distressing.

My daughter asked the simplest and hardest question. Why? Why is it like that?

I had to pause in the answer for two reasons, first so that my voice wouldn't break just a little — though I suspect she could sense that — and second because I didn't have a specific answer.

I could respond only in generalities: Haiti was a very poor country and it was a massive earthquake — 300,000 people died, there were a million left homeless, and then a cholera epidemic swept up another 4000 lives.

According to UNICEF, a million people, including about 400,000 children, still live in camps. Things move slowly. It all takes time.

Yet it seems there are two clocks at work. One measures the initial response from the international community. It moves swiftly. The other measures the time on the ground, among the rubble, mass death and mourning. It is stopped by a country's internal politics and the small-minded power struggles that overshadow the greater good.

Despite an election in November there is, in effect, no one running the country. A vote will be held on March 20 between Mirlande Manigat, who won a majority of votes in November, and Michel Martelly. As if the country was at not its lowest point, the former tyrant Baby ''Doc'' Duvalier, reappeared on the scene, saying he wanted to help.

An Oxfam report on Haiti entitled From Relief to Recovery was published in January. In it, Roland Van Hauwermeiren, a director for Oxfam in Haiti said: "This has been a year of indecision and it has put Haiti's recovery on hold. Nearly 1 million people are still living in tents or under tarpaulins and hundreds of thousands of others who are living in the city's ruins still do not know when they will be able to return home.

"Rebuilding this shattered country will not happen overnight, but there are key decisions on jobs, clearing rubble, house repairs and allocating land for people who will not be able to return to their homes that can and must be made urgently. We now need the incoming government of Haiti to take its leadership role. The international community, including NGOs, must unite to support the government so that Haitian authorities will have a chance of succeeding."

The report said: ''Despite the success of emergency lifesaving aid after last year's earthquake, long-term recovery from the disaster has barely begun. Public donations as well as funding from donor governments and multilateral institutions for the emergency aid effort were exceptionally generous. However, of the $2.1 billion pledged by governments for reconstruction in 2010, only 42 per cent had been given by the end of the year according to the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti.''

Van Hauwermeiren said: "Too many donors from rich countries have pursued their own aid priorities and have not effectively co-ordinated amongst themselves or worked with the Haitian government. This seriously weakens the government's ability to plan and deliver on its sovereign responsibility – to lead reconstruction."

Ninety-five per cent of quake rubble had not been removed and only 15 per cent of housing rebuilt. In these conditions, what could Landina's mother do? She asked that her baby stay in England where it would have a shot at life. Is this the ultimate act of compassion? A mother thinks she has lost her child, the child is alive, she is reunited with it, she forsakes it so that it might live.

Grief and loss wash through life. Natural disasters, of course, are the tragedies without borders.

Australia in recent times, and now New Zealand, have seen enough of them.

How much giving can we give? Will compassion fatigue set in? It's possible. Charities speak of its effect on fund-raising.

As to that question Why? The answer, if not for the example of people such as David Nott would be despairing. The world is not perfect. And the natural world is indifferent.

We, at our best, shine a light in the darkness.