The Portal to Boomeranger World

Port au Prince, Haiti: Founder of S.O.I.L Reports Compassion not Violence the Norm

Sasha Kramer is an ecologist and human rights advocate who has been working and living in northern Haiti since 2004.

 She received her Ph.D. in Ecology from Stanford University in 2006. Her dissertation focused on human disturbance of the global nitrogen cycle and its impacts on the earth’s ecosystems. She is a co-founder of S.O.I.L.  Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting soil resources, empowering communities and transforming wastes into resources in Haiti.

Sasha Kramer- Facebook     http://www.oursoil.org   January 19, 2010, 10:58 am

Calmness and Solidarity

"This afternoon, feeling helpless, we decided to take a van down to Champs Mars (the area around the palace) to look for people needing medical care to bring to Matthew 25, the guesthouse where we are staying which has been transformed into a field hospital. Since we arrived in Port au Prince everyone has told us that you cannot go into the area around the palace because of violence and insecurity. I was in awe as we walked into downtown, among the flattened buildings, in the shadow of the fallen palace, amongst the swarms of displaced people there was calm and solidarity.

We wound our way through the camp asking for injured people who needed to get to the hospital. Despite everyone telling us that as soon as we did this we would be mobbed by people, I was amazed as we approached each tent people gently pointed us towards their neighbors, guiding us to those who were suffering the most.

We picked up 5 badly injured people and drove towards an area where Ellie and Berto had passed a woman earlier. When they saw her she was lying on the side of the road with a broken leg screaming for help, as they were on foot they could not help her at the time so we went back to try to find her. Incredibly we found her relatively quickly at the top of a hill of shattered houses. The sun was setting and the community helped to carry her down the hill on a refrigerator door, tough looking guys smiled in our direction calling out “bonswa Cherie” and “kouraj”.

When we got back to Matthew 25 it was dark and we carried the patients back into the soccer field/tent village/hospital where the team of doctors had been working tirelessly all day. Although they had officially closed down for the evening, they agreed to see the patients we had brought. Once our patients were settled in we came back into the house to find the doctors amputating a foot on the dining room table. The patient lay calmly, awake but far away under the fog of ketamine. Half way through the surgery we heard a clamor outside and ran out to see what it was. A large yellow truck was parked in front of the gate and rapidly unloading hundreds of bags of food over our fence, the hungry crowd had already begun to gather and in the dark it was hard to decide how to best distribute the food.

Knowing that we could not sleep in the house with all of this food and so many starving people in the neighborhood, our friend Amber (who is experienced in food distribution) snapped into action and began to get everyone in the crowd into a line that stretched down the road. We braced ourselves for the fighting that we had heard would come but in a miraculous display of restraint and compassion people lined up to get the food and one by one the bags were handed out without a single serious incident.

During the food distribution the doctors called to see if anyone could help to bury the amputated leg in the backyard. As I have no experience with food distribution I offered to help with the leg. I went into the back with Ellie and Berto and we dug a hole and placed the leg in it, covering it with soil and cement rubble. By the time we got back into the house the food had all been distributed and the patient Anderson was waking up. The doctors asked for a translator so I went and sat by his stretcher explaining to him that the surgery had gone well and he was going to live. His family had gone home so he was alone so Ellie and I took turns sitting with him as he came out from under the drugs. I sat and talked to Anderson for hours as he drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point one of the Haitian men working at the hospital came in and leaned over Anderson and said to him in kreyol “listen man even if your family could not be here tonight we want you to know that everyone here loves you, we are all your brothers and sisters”.

Cat and I have barely shed a tear through all of this, the sky could fall and we would not bat an eye, but when I told her this story this morning the tears just began rolling down her face, as they are mine as I am writing this. Sometimes it is the kindness and not the horror that can break the numbness that we are all lost in right now.

So, don’t believe Anderson Cooper when he says that Haiti is a hotbed for violence and riots, it is just not the case. In the darkest of times, Haiti has proven to be a country of brave, resilient and kind people and it is that behavior that is far more prevalent than the isolated incidents of violence. Please pass this on to as many people as you can so that they can see the light of Haiti, cutting through the darkness, the light that will heal this nation.

We are safe. We love you all and I will write again when I can. Thank you for your generosity and compassion.

With love from Port au Prince,

Sasha  "

http://www.oursoil.org

Boomers Become Facebook Friends--Banish Depression and Loneliness

Building Community

After some reluctance, I am now a big fan of Facebook and will be setting up my Twitter account soon.(In fact, I am going to tweet a novel I have been thinking about for a long time and never seem to have the time to write, what with all the www.thimbleberrypress.com writing, business building and development, and parenting my kid, laundry, cooking, shopping, gardening, bill paying--whew! it is a lot for one person. BUT I think I can handle 140 characters.

So stay tuned for that project and I hope you all will give suggestions as I go along. anyway...) I invite readers to come to Facebook and become friends. I have found old friends and classmates from high school and college. Long lost friends--one who is now in Geneva. Had brunch with another who lives across the river from me. Went to classmates.com today and found another 10 or so former classmates/friends and asked them to come to facebook. Love that it is free. Love that you can communicate privately or to the whole group of friends. I'm even starting to love the pictures--need my kid to teach me how to upload and edit, etc. I took a pic on her macbook last week. she has edited it and we'll upload it on sunday night to my facebook profile.

For someone who sits alone in her house most days, staring at this screen, facebook is really wonderful. I feel I am starting to have again what I had as a kid--a big community. I really get it now. I get why my kid loves facebook and IMing. why she is a maniac about texting--I think I will have to get a bigger keyboard or an iPhone or similar touchpad phone to text.

There Is Only Here Now

 The internet has erased time and space--and there is no more there there, there is only here now--we are all one in the internet cloud. The ramifications for us Boomers is profound. Kids grow up and scatter. Friends move away--as I did to far flung parts of the world--all over the US, then to China for several years. And while I needed to shake the dust off my small town feet, my roots got parched because I could never really stay in touch with friends and family in an easy way. Facebook has changed all that. And when I found my drama department pals from UNC-Ch, I was so happy. I began to feel grounded again.

Baby Boomer Depression and Loneliness

 Many Boomers are suffering from depression and loneliness precisely due to severed human connections--they are no longer at their jobs, their elders are dying, their kids are going, their ages are bringing new issues to the fore. But the new social networking platforms are a tonic to depression and loneliness. Anthro 101 and Psych 101 are very specific that human beings are social animals. We travel in packs. We like to congregate.

But some of the conditions of contemporary society obviate our most basic needs and means keeping us connected and happy.  The new social networking platforms are a great anti-depressant.

Join me as a friend on Facebook

www.facebook.com. It's really simple even for a pretty tech mini knowledge person such as I. You go to Facebook, open an account--it's free and you are set. Noodle your way around. Then, go to the "Find Friends" button at the top of the page (or "Search"), fill in my name---'Virginia Cornue" and ask to be my friend. I'd love to be yours.

Here's to raising everyone's spirits!