Blog for Katrina

Today, I have heard is blog for Katrina day. I don't know how well I can do that. I cannot process the sights I am seeing on tv, in the paper and on the web. I am stunned, and shamed and even humbled. Sadness and anger overwhelm me when I try to think about it too much. And I do not know one person who was actually in the path of the storm. Strange, huh.

The most overwhelming thought that I have had over the past two days is how wrong I was. When I am watching the people huddled together, life pocessions reduced to a garbage bag begging for rides or water and food; when I hear about people dying while waiting for help in a shelter, and they are only covered with a blanket and left there I am reminded of my own feelings I often have when I watch similar scenes (for whatever reasons) from other countries. I have always watched them with compassion, wishing I coul reach out and help the people. Wondering why their own country and people would fail them so badly to leave them in these position. And I have always thought it could not happen here. Never would I have believed that one day I would be watching news stories live from a major US city that would remind me of Kosovo and several African countries.

I don't know why I always thought that, because I know that we are not immune to disasters here, we are not perfect. But with our technology, infrastructure, education and a strong governmental system - who would have thought. But Katrina has humbled me in this regard.

We are beginning to enter the second phase of this story, while they are still trying to finish up the rescue effort. People, USA citizens are going to become refugees in their own country. A major US city is about to become a ghost town - while other towns look more like overused garbage dumps. These refugees will not have the benefit that so many recent survivors an displaced persons from recent storms have had, which is staying close to home, and (hopefully) working the same job while the kids go back to a somewhat normal schedule. These refugees are being bused hundreds of miles away, where they might not have any family around, no job and the children will be put into schools in an entirely different state.

The whole thing is absolutely surreal.

I am praying and am waiting to find out how I can be of help.

Peace,

Amy