As I write this, about 2,100 miles from where I sit people are stranded on rooftops watching dead dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, goats and an occasional human body settle into fetid pools of slimy water.
For the past week, world attention has focused on Haiti. I have been receiving several daily emails about the forlorn little island, which has taken brutal beatings from four major hurricanes. My interest in the unfolding terror is more than academic.
On my desk is a photo of a woman wearing a scrub suit carrying a beautiful, terrified Haitian baby to have surgery performed by Pueblo, Colo., surgeon Jim Smith in a makeshift operating room with dirt floors and no glass in the windows. Dr. Smith is my friend; his surgical assistant is my daughter.
A couple of years ago, a group of Pueblo people assumed responsibility for doing something substantial for the benighted residents of the tiny Caribbean island, who throughout their lifetimes have known only fear, poverty, pain and suffering beyond my ability to comprehend. The average life expectancy is about 48 years.
The helping group is a mix of interrelated representatives of Pueblo's St. Mary Corwin hospital, Ascension Episcopal Church and the Foundation for International Professional Exchange (FIPE). Their efforts focus on the Haitian coastal town of Gonaives.
Heavy rains and mudslides brought down the key bridges, which severed the only viable land route, where hundreds of bodies were found after walls of water and mud engulfed them. Some of those bodies most certainly are Haitians whose paths crossed those of the Coloradans who came to help them and grew to love them.
Word came yesterday that a major player in this miserable mix, Pere Max, the Episcopal priest in Gonaives, is in the capital city of Port-au-Prince trying desperately to get to his devastated flock 60 miles away as the crow flies, but they might as well be on the moon.
The flock includes a herd of goats given to his impoverished people as the startup of a grassroots enterprise that would provide both food and income for people so poor the only solid meal their children get is the daily lunch served at Pere Max's school. The goats are a casualty of nature's rampage.
Mobs are ambushing trucks carrying emergency food. Nearly half of the corn and rice crop in the region is under water, which bodes badly for a country that can barely feed its own people. "If we don't find a way to deliver massive humanitarian aid, we will see fights and riots that will kill more people than the cyclone did," warned a UN spokeswoman. "People are desperate; the situation is explosive."
The history of such wretched poverty in paradise is complicated. It involves political intrigue, inept intervention by neighboring governments — including the United States — and an indigenous religion composed of bastardized Christianity and voodoo.
Dr. Paul Farmer, renowned in the world of global health care, said last week, "After 25 years spent working in Haiti, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed there.
Is Haiti's situation hopeless? No informed authorities will answer with an unequivocal "no."
Will the people of Pueblo give up on the island and direct their humanitarian efforts elsewhere? Their answer to that is an unequivocal, emphatic "no."
Even before the filthy mud dries in the sinkholes, the bodies are identified and buried, and the healing tropical winds blow the stink away, a team led by Dr. Smith is preparing to return as soon as it is possible and feasible to do so.
I propose the group call itself "Operation St. Jude."
St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes.
Editor's note: W. Jackson "Jack" Wilson is a psychologist, an Episcopal priest, a sometime academic and a writer living in Colorado. He writes with humor, whimsy, passion and penetrating insight into the human condition. And in Pushkin, Russia, a toilet is named in his honor.
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