Two articles strike (and depress) me as I read today's New York Times, for the similarities they share -- people living in dire conditions -- and the differences they do not -- urgent international reaction, or just indifference and unawareness.
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As the rescue of living people in Port-au-Prince comes to an end, the international humanitarian agencies on the ground see newborns as a sign of hope in a chaotic society where the infrastructure is leveled to the ground together with the dead. Haiti is however the country with the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the western hemisphere, a fact even before January 12. Not a good omen for the roughly 7,000 babies expected to start their lives in Haiti's affected areas in the coming month. Nor for their mothers.
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Nicholas Kristof's article is on yet another ignored world's scar. The civil war in Eastern Congo is the deadliest conflict since WWII. It has claimed at least 30 as many lives as Haiti's earthquake. I have never been to Congo, so I don't really know the reality in the field, but it seems to me that many of these African conflicts have gone way beyond the straight matter of fact killing of minorities that you so often (unfortunately) observe in other parts of the world. It's the sophisticated and macabre aspect of the article's details that lays beyond my understanding abilities. In any case, the article made me feel grateful for everything I have and hardly ever value, and made me also think of people who go the extra mile so that this information is published in the New York Times. If the world still decides to ignore it, then... I lack the words.
