The second tropical storm of the season, OLGA, passed over yesterday. It left another 30 people dead and much damage to the bananna crop. The last storm, Noel, did terrible damage to the plantains and rice crops. Calls are going out for everyone to bring sheets and mattressess, food, etc. People do help here and there is enough organization to get the help to the people. The two dams that were burst in the last storm have already been repaired.
My internet is still not working from that storm, although I have spent two days and $$$$ sitting on hold on my cell phone with the company. (hence my silent blog) But it always quite astonishes me when anything works at all here. 42% of the people live below the world poverty level of $2 a day-- and certainly most of them are illiterate -- so it is a wonder that there is any internet at all.
In one of those wild juxtapostiions, I heard Al Gore talking to the Climate change conference in Bali over CNN in Spanish (don't know if he got any coverage inside the US) -- he had the courage to state that it was the US who was the major obstacle to any meaningful improvement.
I think of this fragile island, how every storm brings death-- and how much worse the storms will become if something is not done.
The world as seen from a large island off the coast of Florida, located between very right and very left, and very rich and very poor.
About Me
- Elizabeth Eames Roebling
- Santo Domingo, District National, Dominican Republic
- Born and raised in Greenwich Village and educated by the Quakers - which perhaps accounts for it. I have an ongoing concern with the wounds of slavery. I am an unreformed and unrepentant idealist, believing that life, indeed, could be better if we put our minds, spirits, shoulders and backs into it.
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