And so what…

planes will not fly
vacations postponed
business trips canceled

weddings missed
engagements lost
births not witnessed

emergencies unattended

…as if our entire busy
world suddenly

paused

The Final Solution to the Palestinian Problem

The Palestinian problem has been an enormous thorn in the relations between Israel and the greater world. This has prevented a capable Western styled government from bringing the full fruits of its democracy to the Middle East. With the constant niggling and debate of rights, it is time for Israel to assert its full historic right to the full and final occupation of Greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River to Lebanon and south to Sinai. We can stop the illusion and fantasy of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Historically, this land was Israel, with stretches of time occupied by every power in the region. Though we had a period of Diaspora and left the area for two thousand years does it matter whether it was two days or two thousand years? Of course not. It is now time to fully reclaim this land and come to a final solution to the Palestinian problem. The moral clarity of this solution will shatter any sentimental notions
Though one can object to some “final solutions” previously, there were merits to it. Ironically, Germany’s final solution, allowed for the creation of the state of Israel, and Adolph Hitler may have inadvertently done more for Jews than Herzog. Though it is easy to condemn Hitler, I’m sure there was a grain of clarity to his final solution. Israel needs to stop depending on the United States for $3 billion dollars annually and to stop spending 45% of its GNP on military. We need to use this money to really bring back the garden of Eden. Before the creation of the state of Israel, the area was farms, fishing enterprises, and some minor industries, a backwards society that lived for generations tending the land. It was only when Israel took over that we took the archaic farms and made them into modern agribusiness, created arms industries, one of the worlds largest armies, and yes, a very capable nuclear weapons systems that a true transformation was possible. It’s time to rip off the veil of this illusion. Israel is the most powerful army in the Middle East and the sooner it takes the necessary and, albeit politically awkward public relations problem of the Palestinians, the sooner we can get on with fulfilling the prophecies.
Gaza can be a beautiful beach-front resort once Israel relocates Hamas to Somalia or Sudan. The Zionist homeland has worked diligently to get the world to see that this so called National Liberation Movement is in reality a terrorist organization and that all of our actions to wipe out this scourge are a blessing for Israel and all peace loving democracies. Not all Gazans need to leave there are many positions available in the service industry where we will need manpower, but maintaining absolute fealty to the fatherland -- Israel. Between the genius of Israelis and labor of loyal Palestinians is a perfect solution.
All Palestinians who choose not to become citizens of Israel, of course not full citizens, since full citizenship requires conversion to Judaism, but a limited citizenship in the way that Black Jews and other Palestinians have been incorporated into Israeli, would be shown the door to Jordan. In the way that the US uses illegal aliens, Israel needs people to work the farms, wait on tables, and do the necessary manual labor. Of course, like with the talented tenth, the extraordinary Palestinians who accept the notion of an Uber Israeli Jewish state can be part of the great Zionist state. After all, most Muslims in the region were Jews forcibly converted to that Mohammed or Christian thing. Those who chose not to participate in this great democracy will be removed to Jordan which is already sixty percent Palestinian. This would also provide a great opportunity for the people who claim displacement in Lebanon to reunite with their families and that solves the Right of Return. Our vision of a pure homeland that allows for democracy and security to flourish in the context of a Jewish state is a logical conclusion: Wouldn’t you agree?
Though the removal will initially be traumatic the final solution in greater Israel will allow for unprecedented opportunities for Palestinians in Jordan or other countries in the Middle East. Unless there is the preposterous notion of Palestinians having their own fully functioning independent state in the West Bank and Gaza?

Love is the Imperative

Sweet ecstasy of morning and robins singing that sweet eternal spring song, nascent dreaming Spring. Opening to that possibility. The glorious sweetness of Spring The freshness of the day with unlimited possibilities. Unlimited creative possibilities as well stay focused as part of the morning meditation on Blue Heron Pond. Tremendously creative spirit right now, centered. Awake! Awake the morning is calling to awaken.
My center grounding to this spot here on Blue Heron Pond. Enjoying the absolute simplicity of the morning by Blue Heron Pond.
Do we have the strength of conviction and courage to sit by the pond with exquisite attention to the sound of robins and to the creative inspiration, the crackling vivacious scintillating energy of life. The glorious rhapsody of spring, the affirmation of continuity. The awe and connection to eons when people first felt the awe and hope of Spring. For millennia, after long hard winter the first shoots of green and flowers. A long winter all the food supplies exhausted. The animals scarce. The old and infirmed died. Children born. The circle of life starting over again. This is the continuity. My imperative as an artist or as a person it is very simple: Look! Listen! Be awed!

This is the imperative that I wrote Vermont my home,

CARE WELL

The last poem is
for this elegy to the pond –

sacred body of water
who has taught me more
of reverence than any church.

wiser in its quiet wisdom,
than any holy book or tome.

care well!
it seems to say.
care well!

swimming in the freezing
waters, ice cold springs
surprise and awaken me!

finches, darts of yellow
race across the fields.
blue jay screech warns!
robins, plump, are ready to nest.

care well!
it seems to say.
care well!

frogs’ night chorus more
joyous and godly than any
Bach chorale; tulips divine
the intersect of mystery,
revelation from the earth
and desire from the sun.

The Blue Heron is
nowhere in sight, sage
of these meadows who
nests high in the hemlocks,
is patiently biding her time.

Care well,
she seems to say.
Care well!

In a few years or less
I will be dead, but I
don’t grieve this passing.

I will grieve if we have
not loved this earth with
sublime tenderness,
reverenced the pond as
dearly as our gods, cherished
the wisdom of a flower,
and held the divinity of
each living creature as a
mirror of god’s love.

I believe that as god
spun the planet earth
on her course and
brought it to life


She set it free with this
single blessing:

“Care well!

How do we live in the world with reverence, not for some god or gods of our imagination, not some external moral authority based on our fears and fantasies and miasms of childish emotions. How are we truly coming close to that spirit of a truly wise and tender spirit?
There is too much violence and destruction, our interactions with such misunderstanding and malice, our phenomenal capacity for greed, and our rapacious interaction with the planet. Our spirits should be joyfully singing and opening the our souls to the ecstasy of life and love, yet we choose the lesser. Do I choose personal vanity of anger over the wisdom of the Earth; we choose greed over generosity of spirit. We have far greater capacity to choose a life-affirming way of being in the world. Yet we choose to often, a world such violence and greed. What is the legacy that we leave the next generation?

Violence in all levels is on my mind this morning in all the guises it wears. The destruction of the planet, global warming, militarism, the insane volume of hatred and violence we see on the television, movies, and all the video games. We are culture it seems that worships violence and war. The USA sacrifices the education of our children, the health of a nation, the safety of the environment, and spend more than all of Europe, Russian, and China combined on military. What is this insanity all about?

The Buddhist principle is the mandate --Do no harm. It then compels us to ask, what does this mean? What is the principle of no harm? By opposing this violence in the world do we become a force a power and energy presence for a greater Love? A profound love needs to hold us close, as close as a suckling child to a mother. We need to fill our spirits with the capacity for genuine love. Love that is transformative. Love that embraces the world as a sacred gift.

My imperative as an artist is to celebrate the magnificent beauty of the planet. To hold dear the water, to savor the sweetness of the air, the clarity of the skies, the preciousness of each breath.
How do we live and act in the Miracle Mind?
I sit in meditation by Blue Heron Pond the sun is making its mark around the stand of pines. Sunlight illuminates white rock sits implacable in the center.
Act wisely and well in the world. Turn off the television. Fold the newspapers. Look at this wisdom of a Spring day. The wisdom of the day is a conversation of love. Love as a celebration. Love as joy. Love is the imperative.

Love is the imperative

tender
loving
spirit

care
love
courage

you

other

the Earth

love
is
the
imperative.

namaya @Blue Heron Pond

Museum of An Extinct Race: A People formerly Known as Palestinians

"We must expel Arabs and take their places." David Ben Gurion l937

There is a living museum in Israel called the Museum of An Extinct Race. The Israeli government will commemorate the memory of a nearly extinct race, a people formerly known as Palestinians (PFKP), who had been living in the fatherland, Eretz Israel, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. These primitive folks lived on farms and cities, before the rightful owners, the Jewish people, returned after a two thousand year absence. The Museum of an Extinct Race is another example of the leadership of Israeli in addressing the so-called Palestinian issue and coming to a final solution.
First, it is necessary to correct some misperceptions of these so-called Palestinians. As Prime Minster Golda Meir said, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." The anti-Zionist conspiracy has endeavored to undermine the state of Israel, a state founded on the moral bedrock of the old Jewish testament. Though the Israeli flag has a Star of David, the symbol of Judaism, nevertheless, we do not intentionally exclude Muslims. The sooner Muslim Arabs adhere to our European Jewish values the quicker they can be fully incorporated into the greater Zionist vision of the state of Israel, and finally put to rest this, frankly, silly notion of this so called people – Palestinians. Otherwise, in the words of David Ben Gurion our founding Prime Minister, “We must drive them out.” Or, more vividly by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, “The Palestinians …crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” How can the world or any reasonable person argue with such moral clarity? Nevertheless, the Museum of Extinct Species takes a more enlightened perspective and wishes to preserve the memory of this culture. In as much as Israel has and continues to eradicate the blight of Muslim communities, we wish to preserve the Oriental je ne sais quoi so endearing to tourists.
The term PFKP, people formerly known as Palestinians, eliminates the tedious pretensions of identity and ownership. By eliminating the confusing Muslim names where virtually everyone is Mohamed or Ali, we assigned numbers to them, PFKP 1, PFKP 2, and so forth, and give each a small tattoo for record keeping. The Museum of an Extinct Race is a sure path to a final solution to the Palestinian issue by eliminating the remotest pretension of a “Palestinian Identity.” As Menachem Begin, the Nobel Peace Prize winner said, “There can be no Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.”
The germ of the project began when our leader Alfred Rosenberg created Hohe Schule or the Academy, a center of education to lay the foundation for this museum and an institution to study the PFKPs. The institution serves as a repository for their books, rugs, and primitive artwork. The PFKPs were mostly agrarian bumpkins and their Muslim ideology of fatalism was a hindrance to their development and failure to adapt to the modern industrial age of capitalism. This underscores some of the arguments of Social Darwinism that some races are inherently more successful than others.
The museum will view how these Arabs came to settle in the greater Levant and for centuries remained in the region, until the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homes after 2,000 years. Though there was some displacement and readjustment with PFKPs in ancestral villages, and according to the biblical maps these were Jewish settlements or at least had Jewish place names. We acknowledge what David Ben Gurion had said, “There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
In the great liberation of historic Israel in l948, many of these PFKPs fled before the Anschluss to Lebanon and their true homes in Arabic countries. This was a blessing and it gave the rightful Jewish owners a chance to reclaim this land, and after all, as the chosen people, a two thousand year history of absence is a trifle.
The museum will also correct the absurd world-view that the rightful annexation of the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River south to the Negev, to the Golan Heights, was wrong. With the final removal of the Arabs from Jerusalem, the full rightful occupation of all of the area to the west Bank, the deportation of unruly and ungrateful Arabs to Jordan or wherever this scourge came from. As Jerusalem is cleared of the last remnants of the PFKPs, they will realize the superior culture and ontogenetic imperative of the Jewish people to achieve an ethnic purity. The Museum of an Extinct Race will be a fitting tribute to the policies of Israel in dealing with PFKPs, or as our scholars have called it “Arabfrage”, the Arab Question. There had been discussions of deporting the remnant people to Madagascar or elsewhere in Africa more accommodating to their Arabic disposition; yet, we wish to preserve the memory of their sejour. For example, the Muslim quarter in old Jaffa, is very charming without the clutter of Muslims, and their old schools and buildings make very chic bistros.
Imagine the possibilities as we contemplate a Final Solution to the thorny Arab Problem. Yes, the ethnic purity of the Israeli homeland will be a profound step forward, and a fitting memorial is this Museum of an Extinct Race.

Old Farmer Joe, the Flying Finn

Yesterday trudged through the snow, drifts of snow that would swallow a child, huge drifts that captured pickup trucks, mountains of snow so sensuous that a bent and gnarled Vermont dairy farmer by the name of Joe leaped up from his wheelchair by the fire, slapped on a pair of rusty skies from the wall, put on his GI helmet from WW II, and roared, "If I die in this last run, let it be with a fit of glory." With a stiff shot of Wild Turkey, a bellowing roaring hellacious shout that woke up the black bears from their slumbering winter reverie Farmer Joe took off like a greased pinball. Well not that elegant, he looked like marionette on Ritalin and a double dose of espresso, he flew in a whirling pirouette, akimbo, the geometry of space and time defied, one ski to the ground the other at an impossible angle defying the expectations of physics and a withered arthritic body.

His wife Maude looked out the window and said, "Damn!" Get the hell off the mountain you crazy old coot!"
She was so angry and knew that Joe couldn't hear a damn thing since he lost his hearing aid nearly a decade ago. A determined tenth generation Vermont woman, she grabbed her 12 gauge shot gun from over the fire place, popped in a few shells, and turned to the mountain where Joe was coming over the hill so fast and with such acrobatic improbability he could pass for Shaun White or one of those other snowboarding fools.

Joe was ready for the last half mile when Maude let loose with a shotgun blast to get his attention. As she was to tell the police, I didn't want to hurt the SOB, I just wanted to get his attention. Well, the road to salvation and perdition are both lined with the best of intentions, and in equal measures in some cases, most time not. So when she aimed at the mountain ridge, a good 25 yards behind his head, she didn’t fully take into account the wind, barometric pressure, or the fact she didn’t have glasses on. Maude couldn’t find the thick coke bottle glasses, but she could find her way around the house just fine. As to the shot, well, it was a fine and splendid shot, as accurate as one could expect. Amazingly enough, it was exactly 25 yards behind his head, so crisp and powerful, it knocked her half way cross the kitchen, but the real fun was just about to begin, or at least from some people’s point of view.

The ledge of snow, ice, and debris that had been building up on the rock ledge gave a ferocious shudder, and even old farmer Joe who was in the most glorious rapture, envisioning himself as the Flying Finn, as a an Olympian athlete trapped in the rusty vestments of an old coot, that was until the avalanche woke him up. He took a gander behind him, it looked like the jaws of death with jagged white teeth ready to chomp him up. Not just, chomp, chomp, and chew him up. This one was going to chew him up and spit him right out into the Pearly Gates, perhaps delivered in a few dozen pieces.

Even the Flying Finn never flew in such a fleeting ferocious flurry. In the midst of fear that would have killed even the most mortal of men, Old Joe, casual as a professional assassin was unmoved. He moved the wad of Red Chief chew tobacco to his other cheek, gave a long gnarled brown spit, crouched down as much as he could, tucked the poles under his arm, and gave a banshee come hell or high water scream, “Yahooooooo! It’s death or glory!” Some accounts who witnessed old Joe’s race down the mountain some described it as a Baryshnikov on skis, others as the Flying Finn, and those more jaundiced like his friend Josiah said, “Damn fool, put on his hat and jacket, but forgot to put on his pants! The boy gotta’ be careful, something important might fall off.” Yes, folks, a half naked Vermont dairy farmer out of control, skiing on one leg and the other at the most peculiar of right angles, chased by an avalanche down the side of the steepest mountain in all of Southern Vermont.

Death and old Joe were neck and neck, Death nipped at his skis and chewed a chunk or two, a boulder of ice flew by his head and nicked his ear, the avalanche was gaining, but Joe determined to beat the old SOB of Death. “I’ve been here for 90 years and Death I ain’t going with you!” As he took the most monstrous of moguls, a sixty-foot ravine and faster than a Shelby Mustang in fifth gear, he hit that mountain. Up, up, up high he flew! For good measure, or perhaps for dumb, real dumb luck, he did a double back flip and through some miracle no one could quite explain, he fly so high and far that he wound up in a feathery soft snow bank outside his front door. Head peering up from the snow, skis impaled on the wall of the house, and he looked up to see the beet red face of his wife.
Maude said, “What took you so damn long to get off the mountain!”

Returning from Holiday at the US Airport from the Middle East

Returning to the US after a month in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon I was of course stopped by the security guards and a rotund TSA officer who looked like he was a life long devotee of McDonalds and KFC. As I can best near recall, this was the conversation

Security
Why were you in all these A rab countries? Were you making bombs?” he started to chuckle at his joke.

Me
No, I am only a student of the process. A student, you know, Talib, to learn.
(The security guard looked at me suspiciously)

Security
What were you learning?

Me
Why in the medina, I am sure you know, in the old city of Damascus they have….Shssshh! Hush hush (and lowered my voice) a nuclear bomb factory.

(His eyes bulged; I could see in his eyes the American flag and hailed on TV as a hero for uncovering a bomb factory in the Middle East. From the pudgy jowls, his eyes squeezed closed)

Security
Tell me more!” he said with stern authority

(I felt I had no other choice but to lay it on thick and fast.)

Me
Well sir, I know I can trust you with this very classified information, as you are the most senior TSA guard, and of course the TSA, is like (I paused and lowered my voice)… the CIA, but better.

(His chest puffed up like a cartoon figure of Pluto in Popeye, and like the cartoon, when he puffed up his chest his pants started to fall down, but my TSA guard at the gate was quick on the draw and grabbed his trousers.)

Me
There in the medina, the old city is a veritable nest of Muslims making nuclear bombs faster than grandma baking cookies. When you go past the bab, that is the gate, past the dress shops and the headscarves is a tiny alley, by Sheik yer Booties Baksheesh shop, and if you knock three times on the ceiling, tick tock tick, not any more, because that will tip them off, they’ll blow themselves up quicker than you can say “Allah Akhbar. By the way do you know what Allah Akhbar means don’t you?”

Security
Sure do, Allah Akhbar means, I got a bomb and I’m going to lay a jihad on you. Right? (He looked at me with this limpid rheumy cholesterol filled eyes.)

Me
Man, you’re one smart TSA guy! No wonder they have the best of the best working here.

Security
(With his chest puffed out and clutching his pants)
He said, “Sure thing! Shssshh don’t say anything, but I am the Top Gun here.

Me
Your secret is safe with me… Top Gun…sshhhh!” As I was telling you, it looks like an ordinary shop where they make tourist trinkets and t-shirts “Grandma went to Mecca and bought me this t-shirt,” but no in the back room (I lowered my voice even softer as he leaned closer) is not only where they make bombs, but… Shssshh nuclear bombs. It is Iran but worse.

Security
What could be worse than an Islamic nuclear bomb?

Me
A picture of a naked American girl wearing a headscarf! Yup, they’re making that bomb in the little backroom, reactors in the rear next to the bathroom, uranium storage facilities by the stove, and I know it is hard to believe but these – pervert Jihadists are making a bomb that will scare thebe Jesus out of any righteous Christian American.

Security
I’ve got to call this in. I’ve been taking notes and

(Suddenly a voice over the speaker said, “Mc Coy, you can let the suspect go.”)

Security
But this man has observed a terrorist plot and they’re making nuclear bombs in the markets of Old Damascus! This is national security stuff!

Voice of the Office through the Speaker
Look, uhm, Top Gun, we get it all on tape (In the background I could hear them laughing through the thin door) and you can let him go. We’ll put a tail on him and make sure everyone knows how you cracked this case wide open.

Security
Really sir? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No terrorist can get past me! You sure we have to let him go? Right?

Me
Thank you Top Gun I am glad that I was able to share with you this evil cabal in the souq of Old Damascus.

Haiti, Love, Courage and Lords of the Flies

Love and Courage in Haiti

My journey to Haiti began improbably in Damascus as I watched Al Jazeera’s broadcast of the earthquake, and then received a message from a friend, “We have a plane going to Haiti can you come for medical work?” On my return from a month in the Middle East, I booked my flight to Florida and hooked up with a homeopathic medical team to Port Au Prince. Words are too anemic to hold the immensity of this tragedy that has shattered the very brittle foundation of Haitian society. The catastrophe is not only the humanitarian crisis, it is the story of a people who overthrew slavery, were oppressed by colonial powers, suffered from decades of dictatorships and misrule, and who remain trapped in poverty and ruled by a tiny elite. Nevertheless, out of the tragedy there is, however bleak, a tomorrow founded on the strength, courage, and dignity of the Haitians as they endeavor to rise above the catastrophe.
I arrived on Wednesday night in early February a few weeks after the major earthquake demolished 90% of Port Au Prince. I expected the worst. I packed water and food for seven days, a back up water filter, kazoos for kids, balloons, flutes and whistles, homeopathic medicines, a sleeping bag, a ground cloth, 165 pounds of medical supplies, my guitar and extra strings, and miscellaneous items. I felt like I was preparing for an Army excursion instead of a humanitarian mission. There was support, money, and help from many friends and neighbors. Haiti has inspired so much love and support from around the world, and my earnest hope is that this love will endure and engender a genuine transformation for all Haitians.
The next day we awoke at 5 a.m. and drove north from Santo Domingo to the Haitian border. Lush mountains and fields pass by in an idyllic reverie. Convoys of supplies creep up to the border and we inadvertently join a Canadian military contingent of jeeps, construction equipment, medical supplies, soldiers, security, and the thousands of other components that make up a relief mission. How does anyone coordinate any of this? How are the myriad of aid agencies, with all their noble intentions, making a cohesive and coordinated plan? Here in this former paradise, now a desert of need, every drop of help and assistance is a blessing.
There are no passport controls at Haiti’s borders; instead, total chaos, brutal survival, no running water, children bathed in buckets of brackish water, an open ditch on the side of the road is the toilet, human life stripped of all dignity except for the dignity to survive. Several thin children with swollen bellies are playing in a puddle of sewage and other kids dressed in worn and soiled shorts. The fetid smell of sewage, sweat, and unwashed bodies permeates the air. It is hot without respite of trees or shade. The roads are the most basic tracks carved into the dirt, whatever was a road has long disappeared, cavernous pot holes every few meters is a reminder that you have now entered a Fifth World country; not a Third world country, but a Fifth World hell of abject poverty, except for the tiny elite who rule. Cars broken down by the side of the road and stripped of anything useful and piles of trash and garbage. It is as if a giant airplane dumped humans and cargo from the sky and left. Even in the best of times, Haiti is the poorest of poor countries, and now it has slipped even further away.
At the border, a vast new salt-water lake is creeping further in land. No one knows where this is coming from. In a country of disasters, this is only one more disaster and it has to take its place in a long queue of problems. Devoured by an earthquake, drowning from the sea, air polluted by burning garbage and human waste, open cooking fires from scraps of wood, a recipe for hell in the midst of what was once an island paradise.
The white chalk and salt hills to the south, fields with weeds and scrub grass, but there are no signs of sugar cane or other cash crops. People dressed in threadbare rags till the fields by hand with wooden hoes, the same tools their grandparents tended these fields. Ninety percent of Haitians work on fields like this or in a similar degree of servitude on some of the larger plantations. However, there is an even lower level of desperation, another lower circle of hell, thousands of children sold to peasant families as slaves, restaveks. Restaveks “one who stays with a family,” is an old Haitian tradition, an irony in this a country who freed themselves from slavery, and then created this new form of slavery. Thousands of children are enslaved and there is an organization working to free those children. (http://www.restavekfreedom.org/).
Driving to the epicenter of the quake in Port Au Prince, the cracked and fallen buildings become more numerous, masses of people wander the streets. The further you drive into Port Au Prince, the more intense the devastation. Though the city had over two million living in abject poverty in shacks like the sprawling slum of Cite Soleil before the earthquake, it is difficult to imagine a situation more tragic and grave. The Presidential Palace looks like a wedding cake tossed to the sky, akimbo, and broken. The pride and culture of Haiti destroyed: Parliament, Museums, government buildings, 90% of the city, and most of the schools and universities are gone. The once elegant park across from the Presidential palace now completely filled with tiny huts built with scraps of wood, plastic, cloth, or anything remotely resembling a home. People wash in buckets, pee in the streets, nurse babies, every aspect of life is jammed into this park. Tens of thousands of people are everywhere, some selling bananas, offering shoeshines, fruit juice sold on top of a crate, anything to make a few cents. Others are building shanties, tending babies, and children play everywhere. Wherever the tiniest space exists, another cluster of tents and shacks appear. Haiti offers us a new lexicon of wretchedness, but also dimensions of faith and courage.
This morning we met our host, a very wealthy Haitian, the Patron. His palatial modern office is sumptuous, adorned with exquisite folk art, and refreshingly cool after the ten-hour journey. He is the epitome of graciousness and offers us coffee, water, and a fine bottle of wine. He is one of the 1/10th of 1% who reigns in lordly splendor. His mother’s magnificent house; she’s left for Miami for one of their town houses to wait out the earthquake, while some of his employees sleep in the street.
Though Haiti was the first slave colony to over-throw the French, under threat of invasion in 1824 they had to pay their slave masters restitution until WW II. Yes, kidnapped from Africa, sold into slavery, worked for the French, overthrew them, and then had to pay them back! Haiti dutifully paid over 50 % of the national budget annually for a hundred and twenty five year period. Former President Aristide calculated, adding interest and adjusting for inflation, France owes Haiti $21 billion dollars.
IF is the operative word here: if there had been some building codes, if people had not skimped on rebar in building, if the concrete had not been of such an inferior quality, and if people had spent a few cents more, much of this destruction would have been spared. The neighborhood we are working in is a working poor neighborhood, but the earthquake took away the thin divide that separated them from the abjectly poor. At the end of the street, a partially destroyed Catholic Church from the late 1800’s still stands, its tin green roof torn off, the broken plaster walls holding crosses, and other walls barely standing. Church services on Sunday will be outdoors. The political dimensions of power and poverty are always apparent. The Catholic Church has staunchly opposed birth control, condoms, and the result has been AIDS, high birthrate, and high infant mortality. The Catholic Church has been part of the power structure and elite since the founding of Haiti and their culpability in this misery cannot be underestimated.
I walk down the alleys past the main streets and the labyrinth of poverty intensifies. The poorest of the poor use a tarp or scrap of wood or plastic to create a rudimentary shelter or home. A long cement channel choked with stagnant raw dark green sewage bakes in the sun, and a man sits by the side and defecates into it. All illusions of privacy ripped away. I’ve traveled around the globe in almost one hundred countries and have never seen poverty this stark that denies all levels of humanity.
One scraggly bearded man in rags sits on the street corner talking to himself. Even before the earthquake, there was no assistance for the mentally ill, unless taken in by a family. How many seriously mentally ill people are walking around without help?
Our medical team was supposed to work in an orphanage, but it had been completely leveled and their orphans are now homeless and wandering the streets. How many more new orphans are there? In a city of disaster and ruin, whom do you attend to first?
One of the few intact buildings is the French Hospital, a private hospital managed by our wealthy Patron. We began treating patients in front of one of the most exclusive HMO’s (Health Maintenance Organization) on the island, and none of those we treated could have afforded treatment here. A few wealthy Haitians come to the HMO, but the elite go to the Dominican Republic or Miami for their health care. Part of the older hospital had collapsed, but the new clinic survived.
Our “clinic” is a large tent in the parking lot of the hospital. We have two long tables and a few homeopaths, and without advertising, a steady clientele appears. We have the simplest of supplies, bandages, remedies, and willingness to spend time with the patients. Truly, the word “patient” was never more accurate; “patient” in Latin means “to suffer.” The patients, mostly poor, their hands thick with calluses from years of hard manual labor, tell similar stories.
“How long the problem? The illness? The insomnia? The fear?”
“Depuis de tremble terre …Since the earthquake.”
I manage mostly in French with a bit of Creole. With eye contact and gestures, it is easy to discern what they’re saying. Most are still in shock. If they have a home, they’re afraid to return, and almost all are living in the street. The health problems are chronic and most have parasites, many appear malnourished from years of poverty, untreated hypertension and diabetes, infant diarrhea, and few have the money to get help.
Our team offered five to ten minutes visits to hundreds of patients per day. In the many patients I saw and served, the miracle was not necessarily the medicine, but the willingness to be here and look into the eyes of the people, to hold their calloused hands and say, “We/ I care about you. Bless you.” Love always is the best medicine. However, it is also invaluable when you have the right homeopathic remedy and supplies, and the allopathic resources. I saw patients for hours, but did not tire as the Haitians’ consistent love and courage revived me.
Frequently they said, “Thank you for coming.” After I treated one adorable six-year old girl, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. Her almond eyes bright and filled with life, how can we in the international community not help this next generation? How can we allow a nation to sink further into poverty?
I liked our portable clinic, less then five meters from the road, open gate, so that anyone could come in; first come first serve, no insurance or fee, no paperwork. People queued up as properly as an English bus stop. It would have been grand to have a full clinic with other specialty services, but this shade tree health care was refreshing. The challenge now is can we create based on clean water and sanitation, good nutrition, use of botanical plants, homeopathy, wholistic and allopathic medicine, and, of course, love? Imagine if this model was in the USA, we could have genuine health care reform. I met so many people, international medical, religious, and church groups, and our homeopathic cadre who offer something more than aid -- a precious gram of hope. Perhaps, the tiny homeopathic dose of love can be the seed to create a new Haiti. Where is the future of Haiti? Two hundred thousand are dead, unaccountable wounded; the hospitals and all the important public buildings and institutions destroyed.
Part of the answer and problem lies in the wealthy, who have ruled and lorded over Haiti since independence in 1804. A Haitian friend said, “Our country never escaped slavery, because the wealthiest enslaved the population, kept all the power and land, and allowed the people to slip further and further into poverty.” Now Haiti is the poorest of all the countries of the Western Hemisphere. The wealthy Haitians who have not left for Paris or Miami are unaffected by the earthquake. Invited to a very wealthy man’s house, I was going to refuse. I have a weak stomach, I didn’t want to puke on the fine china, but a perverse voyeurism compelled me to join them for dinner. After a forty-five minute drive through a devastated city, amongst people living in absolute squalor, we arrive at the most exclusive part of town. One minute we are in squalor and ruined roads, and the next moment, we have changed worlds. The cobblestone roads are meticulous, there is not a spot of garbage, and even the gutters swept clean. Stout walls and metal gates surround their estates. Our host was quite agreeable and pleasant; how can you not be agreeable when the worst disaster in recent history happened and you’re immune from the affect? They keep drums of diesel in their homes, and their generators work efficiently, even when the rest of the island is without power. Sitting in their manicured garden and oasis of privilege, my mind reels from this surreal experience. Our hostess wears pearls and a well-pressed décolleté evening dress. The air burns with the smell of burning garbage from Port Au Prince, and despite the walls and the distance from the city center, the smell still wafts over the wall. If the situation becomes “too difficult,” they fly in private helicopters or planes to their townhouses in Miami. While the city festers and burns, they are the lords of the flies, lording over this once paradisiacal island. Like flies dancing on a pile of excrement, their light winged dance soaring above the pile, touching down to feast, to regurgitate, procreate, and ensure that the rotting excrescence remains to feed them.
The rich are a metastatic cancer of avarice that has devoured this country. This cancer is like seeing a beautiful woman devoured by the disease… her face and appearance still has a regal elegance, but when you remove the threadbare worn silk nightgown, the gaunt emaciated ravages of the disease is evident. Her clear eyes that flirted under moonlit nights are limpid sclerotic pools. The vital organs devoured, the liver swollen with bile, the bones brittle as dried straw, and the will to live and even to survive seeps away minim by minim.
Despite all the wretchedness, their subjugation by the ruling class, and this recent catastrophe even the poorest Haitians I met possessed a quiet powerful dignity. Their courage and faith is inspiring. One night after a long day of work at the clinic, I sat on the outside steps of the hospital to rest. A family with mother, father, children, and grandparents were living on the sidewalk. Although I am not a Christian, their prayers at night, singing songs to Jesus, and asking for his blessing, touched my heart. I sat in the shadows, and took out my Spanish guitar and softly played along. We were less than four meters away from each other. They read their bible with a feeble blue flashlight. Around us were the fallen ruins of buildings, churches, homes, and rubble in the street, the stench of burning garbage. In the midst of this chaos, their beautiful voices rose up and asked Jesus for his blessing. At the last “Amen,” I walked over to them in the dark and gave the father money. I said, “Merci.” Strange, why I should say thank you, but I had been blessed by their dignity, courage, and grace.
The following morning across the street from the clinic, Sunday church service at 6 AM, in an open courtyard surround by ruined buildings, as thousands overflowed and filled the streets. Though many had lost homes, loved ones, and most of their worldly possessions, through some miracle, they dressed in clean and pressed clothes, suit and tie, polished shoes, and pressed dresses. They greeted each other with a sincere handshake, a smile, and a hug.
Songs and prayers in the midst of destruction, apartment houses with the doors and windows intact but lying upside down, at improbable angles. One building intact from the front, but the rear of the building is sheered off, furniture still in place, even a picture frame on the wall. A cement building sliced as if a wedding cake cut with a hot knife and the other half almost perfectly preserved. It is the imperfect logic of nature. The voices of the people rose above the rubble. The evangelical Minister screamed out “Jesus, give us mercy! Jesus, give us courage! Jesus, bless us! Jesus, hear our prayers!” It is an inspiring tent revival service, but there is no tent, only the sky above with blue skies and white puffy clouds serenely pass by.
“Amazing Grace,” sung in Creole by thousands filled my spirit as I treated patients. I gave each patient a homeopathic remedy and felt the remedy itself potentized, made more powerful, by the love and prayers next to me.
I had expected a difficult journey, but despite the lack of water, cold showers when the water was on, voracious mosquitoes, and a few other inconveniences, overall, it was so much easier with the good spirit of the Haitians and my Dominican companion Ruben. My small inconveniences don’t even compare to their lives; I can leave this poverty, they can’t. I had seen hundreds of patients during this stay and though they had lost everything, they opened their hearts and told me a bit of their suffering and lives. I didn’t feel overwhelmed with the devastation; their courage strengthened and fed me. It touched me on a more profound level of humanness– dignity. There is little that is noble about poverty; perhaps, only the courage to live in the present moment, unbowed by the circumstance.
I gave the children a few kazoos and flutes, some crayons and paper, and their faces lit up with surprise. A handful of plastic kazoos, flutes, or penny whistles; it’s as if you gave a violinist a Stradivarius. I played on my guitar they followed on flute and kazoos, a rambunctious chaotic blues! It was delightful to see the adults smiling at this funny scene – this white guy playing guitar and trying to create an orchestra from kazoos, flutes, and penny whistles. The following day I received a present. The kids came over to the clinic area, and gave me two small hard candies in wrappers and said, “Thank you!” Their smiles alone would have been a present enough, and I carefully wrapped the candies in a paper to preserve that memory.
A disaster like this earthquake brings out tremendous kindness, charity and love. My Haitian friend Joe said, “The thing Haiti needs is love! This love, is about changing the character of the country, where the rich and powerful can open their hearts and souls to the people. When we embrace our past and the pain, the power of Agape (love) can heal.” From a former US Army Major turned humanitarian these are powerful words to embrace.
As much as Haiti needs economic assistance, it sorely needs justice as well. The pernicious colonialism of France extorted money from Haiti for 125 years. The United States has a long and sordid history in Haiti: occupation from l915 to l935; active support for the brutal and rapacious dictatorships to follow; its endorsement of virtual slave plantations up to the present, and the US government’s profound allergy to any kind of genuine independent democratic leaders like Aristide. Though the US and international communities are ostensibly generous, it needs to engage in a profound change in the way that it supports and aids Haiti to true economic, political, and social independence. False aid, like charity, robs people of the means to transform their lives. For decades, the US government and the EU, inadvertently or not, funneled aid to the wealthy and well connected who perpetuate their fiefdom.
Haiti is a ravaged beauty: the immense forests have all been denuded, watersheds compromised, top soils depleted by generations of plantations and ignorant agriculture practice. Desperate for fuel and wood, people are still cutting down forests, and less than 1% of the national forests are left. It is difficult to fathom how this desperately impoverished country with very few resources, a high birthrate, generations of poverty and malnutrition, pervasive illiteracy, and the largest pool of the best-educated Haitians living abroad, can make a new tomorrow. Tragically, a law in l987 said that if you have another passport, you lose your Haitian citizenship, and so the Haitian Americans who can be bedrock of a transformation, are not even citizens anymore. Is there a viable future for Haiti and if so who will create it, and who will profit?
The real heroes, if one can use this battered and soiled word “hero,” are the Haitians who wake up every day, feed their children, and sweep the sidewalk in front of whatever place they are sleeping. Haiti has barely survived. There is a tomorrow, but the foundation of tomorrow is tenuous, unless stabilized by a sustained international commitment of resources, money, and investment, and a true commitment to a democratic and pluralistic process.
On the way back to the US I spoke to a young Haitian-American woman from the World Bank based in Washington and asked her if her if she would work in Haiti with all the corruption, dysfunctional governance, etc., and she said, “Maybe, if there is the right project.” Her reticence indicated it would be very difficult to entice this extraordinarily talented woman to work in an environment of such monumental problems and chaos. Those who can leave Haiti do. Where is the talent, vision, spirit and money to genuinely lead this country out of the miasma of this pervasive poverty?
The dignity of faith, courage and love must be part of the necessary vision to guide and create a new Haiti.