May 12, 2008

It has been awhile since I have posted and partly the reason is because I knew I had to say something but didn’t really know what that message should be.

As everyone knows, on Monday, May 12th a magnitude- 7.9 earthquake devastated the Sichuan Province of China. While the shock waves were felt at a distance equal to the continental United States, I didn’t personally register the shaking. Although swaying skyscrapers were evacuated in Shanghai, my building is only three stories tall.

It can be hard to identify with loss in a developing country thousands of miles away because so many people suffer globally every day. I can’t help but think back to when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. At the company I worked for at the time, the televisions in the lobby that are typically scrolling Wall Street numbers were glued to the 24-hour news channels. At any time of the day various amounts of staffers hovered around, shaking their hands, and wondering how something like this could happen in America.

China is my country right now, and thousands of people have died near an area where I traveled only two weeks ago. A disproportional number of the deceased are school children, the same age as the ones I teach.

I always have trouble disassociating, but to me the victims aren’t faceless. They are not just one more notch is a rapidly increasing casualty toll. I see the grandparents who were found cradling their two-year-old grandson when their apartment collapsed; the half dozen school children who bunched together for a security that ultimately didn’t come; the 9th graders who, looking forward to graduation in less than two months from their prestigious satellite school, had all the opportunities in the world suddenly evaporate in mere minutes.

Sichuan will honor their dead, rebuild and move on though geographical as well as emotional scars will remain for decades. For my own benefit, I wanted to take a small pause from my typically light-hearted posts and remember those that did not or will not survive the earthquake on Monday.

While I’m constantly amazed at the resilience of the human spirit, this tragedy has hit the people here pretty hard in what should be a glorious year for the Middle Kingdom. I am one of them.

If you are interested in donating to the Sichuan earthquake victims, I would recommend the following charities: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, World Vision, or Mercy Corps.