Unending Help

A few days ago when the snow had fallen rather heavily, I was out shoveling my parking space. Across the lot was an old man in his 70s who was trying to clear off the snow on his car. What caught my attention was that he was leaning on his cane with one hand while he brushed of the snow with the other.

I could not just watch him do this, and so I went to him and asked whether I would clear the snow for him. He said that he was okay and that he could handle it. He even added the fact that he was also hoping that summer could come sooner. I asked him again, whether he really was sure that he was okay and not just being diplomatic in case he thought I may think that he was unable. After all he was a man. He out righty said that he was “all set”, I watched him drive off with ¾ of his vehicle still covered with snow.

Was I surprised that he did not want my help? Of course I was.

My prayers go out to our brothers and sisters in Haiti. Through no fault they were hit by a natural calamity. They have asked us for support and unlike the old man above they admit that they are indeed in need of support.

While we continue to give them support let us not also try and figure the question of how long can we support? Many have been referring to Haiti as the world’s poorest country. We labeled them before we could even lend a hand. We labeled them so we can be more sympathetic in our giving and we labeled them so we can one day say that we helped them be better off than they were when we came in.

This will be the time for us to reflect how we can be of help t hem for the long term. The donor communities that have pledged to support should not be tired after a couple of months. The international communities should not all of a sudden impose their foreign policies on them since at this point they are vulnerable to all types of experiments by the World Bank and IMF. This is also the time for the Christian community to turn to God the more for all those that are in need of spiritual healing. While the physical cannot be restored the spiritual can still be saved. This is our chance.

I pray that as they take off into their new future we will not allow them to “drive off”: with ¾ of the unresolved problems on their heads only for us to label them again in the future. We should treat them with love and dignity as we give them help. We should learn from past experience as Iraq, south Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda or Burundi or even the Democratic Republic of the Congo that the citizens of the country know more of the issues of the country than the outsiders who has just been reading about it.

The international community will be displaying its wealth and might. When the time comes to leave they will pickup and carry all their hardware and software. This is the time to take advantage and empower the people to be able to self sustaining. The aid agencies should use the professionals in Haiti to help in the reconstruction, by leaving behind some hardware and software. They should employ the locals to do some of the work that would have been done by people coming in after all the Haitians do have the knowhow. Lets teach them how to fish……………….and giving them our better fishing rods will be a great start.