January 18, 2010
it is hard to be here in Mexico not getting caught into the events in Haiti. My calling to assist in large scale disasters gets kicked in very easily. i have tried to avoid newspapers and to not go on line looking up all the stories. Today though we were in Bacalar near Chetumal and a Mexican newspaper was on the table near where i was sitting. i picked it up and could make out the Spanish headlines which said report from the Zone of Terror and that 150-200 million people are believed dead. i have not been able to verify this figure but it is staggering on many levels. one that the death toll could be that high and i know the island of Haiti is small how could that many people live there? i have been in contact with the Massachusetts Corps of Fire Chaplains and we have said we would help in what ever ways we could even if it meant we would go there. Also working through the Unitarian Universalist Trauma Response Ministry Team and think we might be helpful to defuse and debrief any of those responders who do go. So this is why I go on Sabbatical to not read the papers and not obsess with where and how I should respond to world disasters.
Tomorrow we head over to Belize to check it out for the day for the future and at the end of the week i fly for home. i will miss Mexico. i love the land, the culture, the people, the new exposure and experiences. This trip i am even beginning to think some times with the spanish word first instead of the English. Example cafe for Coffee, and Basura for trash and tope for speed bump. tonight it is peaceful and the stars are bright following a torrential downpour and the appearance of a rainbow marking the storms path. goodnight now.
