Haiti Moment #1

As the images continue to flood in to our news sources, we are all left wanting to do something for the people of Haiti. It's a tragedy of nearly unimaginable proportions. Hurricane Katrina is our closest benchmark, and yet the death tole in Haiti threatens to easily surpass Katrina by 10, 20, 50, EVEN 100 times.

Today, when I visited my local Giant Supermarket, there was a table set up outside of the door where two women in Caribbean dress and speaking with crisp accents were asking shoppers for food donations for Haiti. I avoided them, because I thought, how are they planning to get this food to Haiti? There is no mechanism for individuals to send this sort of aid to Haiti. I was being truly cynical in my heart. There is such a need. And I feared there are people willing and eager to exploit that need. But why did I think that these women were any part of such a wicked plot? Why weren't they just two people who had to do something to express their desire to help?

I remember when I lived in Costa Rica back in 1984. After school, I would typically go into the heart of San José to retrieve the mail for the other teachers from the United States working at my school. Afterwards, I would often drop into the only McDonald's in the country at the time and grab an hamburgesa con queso, papas fritas, y una coca lite. Eating my lunch while sitting in the store front, I'd watch this pair of filthy little children beg for money and offer to sell us rich people pictures that they had torn from discarded magazines. It broke my heart. Then one day I saw those kids turn to the beaconing of a man in a suit. They responded by running over to a shiny black limosine and jumping into the back seat. It was not a solicitation, but clearly and obviously a call to end their "work" day--an "Oliver Twist" moment, if you will.

Ever since, I've been unwilling to simply accept things like this at their face value. It's hasn't stopped me from being generous. If anything, I'm more generous year in and year out (It grows with my financial capacity and my belief in the need to give to others (I'm not a Republican)--but that's not my point. The point is just exactly how I'm generous, and how I look with such suspicion on supporting random individuals, no matter how worthy the cause.