“You can see children dying before your eyes. What conceivable justification could there be for this?”
I heard Dr. Jeffrey Sachs say this during his speech at the Notre Dame Forum back in 2006. Those words ran through my head as I walked among the freshly buried graves from deaths caused by Cyclone Sidr. In his speech, he was referring to about deaths caused by malaria – an easily preventable, easily treatable disease. But these words seemed equally applicable to the situation I was in as well. Although I didn’t realize it by watching the news reports, after coming to the disaster area, it seemed quite obvious as to why some people died and others were able to survive.
In fact, it’s so simple even a child could have figured it out.
“Cyclone Shelters” are basically multi-story buildings made with something a bit more sturdy than mud and straw. They can be made of brick, steel and/or concrete. “Going to a cyclone shelter” is just basically going to a one or two-story school. These were the only kind of buildings that survived the wrath of the cyclone. My basecamp, a school turned into a disaster shelter, was across the street from a little cottage-like home. This home, like the shelther, was made with concrete and bricks. And like the shelther, the house stayed intact while all the straw houses and huts around it were wiped out. The solution to saving lives in Bangladesh is as simple as the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. If you have a house made of brick, a cyclone can huff and puff – but it won’t blow your house down.
If it’s this simple, why didn’t anyone else come to the same conclusion? Well, part of the reason is that we live in a 30-second news spot culture. 30-second news spots are great – perfect in fact – for very quickly providing sound bites and flashy images. You mention a death toll, show some destroyed homes, cut to a crying person, and then call it a wrap. But, there is so much more to this tragedy than just that. If people spent more time examining it, they would have a better understanding. That’s what I’m trying to do here by sharing my experiences. Because, showing photos of devastation caused by a cyclone – followed by pleas for donations – is the easy answer to this problem. What happens when the next cyclone comes? And the one after that? And after that?
I’m going to get preachy here for a second and say this: if people in my generation want to make an impact in this world, and leave the world in a better condition than what it was when we inherited it – we have to look at things and examine them for more than 30 seconds. The world would be a better place if we, instead of trying to help people recover from their loss, we tried to help them prevent a loss in the first place. Something as simple as raising the standard of living for the poorest of the poor – so that their homes could be made out of brick instead of mud – could save countless lives. But that’s the harder answer – because it involves more than just making a small donation. It involves more than just looking at something in the news for 30 seconds. It involves actually examining it, thinking about it, and taking action.
Caring for people our the world doesn’t mean your socialist, or communist, or against people taking care of themselves. In fact, caring for the suffering of others can be in our own self-interest. As I was walking in the cyclone disaster area, I remembered how Dr. Sachs finished that part of his speech:
“We have to understand the problem, and we have to solve it. We have to understand that it is urgent, because our own survival is going to depend on it as well. You can’t leave millions of people to die and believe you’re safe. You can’t believe we’re fighting terrorism if we’re neglecting life by the millions. It’s impossible.”
