Today, I write as I stand at the crossroads of fear and awe. On the other side of the mirror, I imagine my mother is doing the same. Our fears are both synonymous of one another's and simultaneously independent of each other. I can not speak for her. I can speak my heart, my fantasy of reality, and my beliefs, but I can only share her facts; her geography, her known possessions. Today, her dreams of changing the world during a time of crisis are becoming actualized, the glow that she was born with inside her heart is being taken out and is now a torch lighting the world around her. Today, my dreams of the most marginalized and heroic place in the world becoming recognized, and loved by imperialism for who it is, as it is, have been activated. I'd like to think that I partly led my mother to her actualazation of her dream and I can say for certain that she has activated the dream that I have quietly fed in the dark recesses of my spirit.
When Haiti was struck by a 7.0 magnitute earthquake on January 12, 2010, my heart froze and sunk to the bottom of my guts. Haiti has, time and time again, been ravaged by natural and imperialist disaster. History has shown that colonialism's big bully brother, imperialism, profits from Haiti's suffering and that most people in the first world blame Haiti for the shortcomings that imperialism has fostered. Haiti, as the first country to successfully win independence through slave revolt, has fashioned itself as a nation determined to succeed with an intact identity separate from slaveholders who tried through force, sanctions and withdrawn support to squelch any self-reliance or national pride. In my opinion, imperialist nations are jealous and threatened. The recent quake at its subsequent aftershocks, which one week later persist with the magnitude of a full force quake, has called the global community into action. This is typical. Global support is motivated by self interest, an opportunity to develop and control, just ask the International Monetary Fund, who likes to swoop in to save the day and then enters the scene when the media leaves to implant humanitarian and ecological time bombs in the name of financial gain. I am afraid of actions taken by people from imperialist privelege in the name of "helping" or "fixing" "third-world" nations. This is partly why I have not visited Haiti in person. I have not found the venue to do so in which I would feel like a human and not a martyr or a voyeur. However, this particular earthquake, in the epicenter of an urban city that houses familyless children, single mothers, and poor and wealthy alike, people's lives were devasted and in need of outside support.
My mother is a nurse from Colorado who has always dreamed of being a part of a healthcare experience where her expertise is needed and makes a difference. She has worked with self-inflicted gunshot wounds, parapalegics, nursing mothers, and swine flu infected fathers. She raised two children and is the grandmother of a perfect baby girl. My continual passion for Haiti was never that intriguing to my mother. But for years, she has known it was there. The earthquake in Haiti awoke a sleeping beast in her and upon hearing about opportunities to provide health care to people in Haiti, she was propelled into action. Through what she might call Divine Intervention, my mother connected with godly Haitian people who invited her to join a caravan to a Haitian run clinic. Doubtless of her choice, she accepted this offer. I imagine that my mother's fear must partly derive from the media's historic image of an AIDS infested pit of violence. Dark skin unlike the pale sun kissed skin of peers must be slightly daunting. If not, she is unlike most american people. And yet, at the precipice of fear of the unknown and awe and understanding of the human need to live despite despair, she has chosen today to board a plane to pull people from the rubble. By doing so, I step away from my fear of perceived impartiality and toward the grace of the human spirit who prays for life five days until able-bodied souls who have left their families, jobs and comforts reach into the rubble and pull her out.
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