Monday, April 12, 2010

Other Voices

Here are some things I'm reading today:

The New York Times has three Op-Eds about the situation now. One of the authors, Evelyne Trouillot, has visited our school and spoken in an assembly to our students.

This article includes a slide show.

Many in Haiti were hoping that President Obama would come to visit them.
“We have received tremendous attention from the international community and President Obama has demonstrated great attention from day one of the disaster,” said Stephanie Jean-Jacques. “I believe Haitians are very grateful to him and his administration, but we are dying to see him come here to see us,” said Jean-Jacques. “We are requesting that of him because we love him,” she said.

Amy Wilentz has been writing about Haiti for a long time and I love the way she turns a phrase. In this article she writes about how Haiti should be rebuilt. I do take exception to this remark:
What is gone, a heart-tugging city of surprising beauty and terrible, ruthless privation, cannot and should not be reinvented. Only sentimental foreigners and perhaps its elderly residents can long mourn the city's demise.
Maybe that just means I'm in the "sentimental foreigner" camp, but while I agree with her that something different needs to be built, I am still in mourning for the "heart-tugging city" that was.

Here's a report by the British Red Cross on the current situation, and here's today's World Vision press release.

And here's a lovely piece by Talie, one of our former students.

No comments: