a whale of a mystery

It is an oddity to me that a disoriented, bottle-nosed whale can grab the headlines of papers across the globe and “steal the hearts” of millions of people.  The little amount of video footage I saw showed hundreds, if not thousands, of people lining the streets and bridges to watch the rescue attempt.  I don’t think that I could even come close to guessing at the number of people-hours that were devoted (and that are still being devoted in autopsies and blood tests and kidney tests, etc) to saving this one helpless animal.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is a sad situation with a lousy ending . . . but it is strange.  And it’s not strange in a surprising kind of way; it’s strange in a “makes me wonder” kind of way.  And here’s why . . .

UNICEF reports that approximately 1.9 million children (under the age of 5) die every year due to diarrheal diseases because of the lack of safe drinking water — over 5,000 children each day.  5,000 children a day.  And with a very few exceptions, there are no front-page headlines.  No interviews.  No autopsies.  No hundreds of people stopping in their tracks to take notice.  And it’s not like these 5,000 deaths per day are from incurable diseases; they are from the simple lack of safe drinking water.

I am not trying to make an argument that there is no place in the media for the sad story of the whale, though it is strange to me that at the news of a misguided whale, the world stops to listen, to watch and to rescue.  But then, at the statistics of children dying, we all too often shrug our shoulders, furrow our brow in sadness, say a sympathetic “HMmm, so sad” and then move on with our lives.  

One whale stuck in a river is a task feasible of taking on.  An easily defined problem: the whale shouldn’t be in river.  An easily defined solution:  move the whale out of river.  An easily defined timeline:  when the whale is moved, the task is complete.  An easily defined outcome:  the whale moved = success, the whale dies = failure.  I found the same trend in my own life just a few weeks ago.  I was pulling my car out of my parking space and I noticed a women and her daughter with the hood of their car up apparently in need of a battery-jump (the car needed a jump.  I have jumper-cables and I had 3 minutes to spare).  I rolled down the window, offered some help, and four minutes later, I was on my way.  Just a few days later, I saw a person on the side of the highway working on changing a flat tire . . . a few excuses-in-my-head later (and at least long enough to get a few seconds at 60 miles per hour past the problem), I passed at the need for help, justifying my lack of “Good Samaritanism” with a long list of excuses — it’ll take too long, it’d be too dangerous, why doesn’t she have roadside assistance?, there’s probably somebody on the way to help out, she looks like she knows what she’s doing, I’m in the wrong lane to get over, I’m not even sure I can change a flat, and on and on and on. 

Most of the time, we evaluate a problem before we offer to help.  How much time is this take?  Is this going to cost me anything?  Will I be inconvenienced by this?  Is it really possible to make a difference?  Is the problem something that is too big to tackle?  Too big to “get my arms around” as my coporo-jargo friends like to say?

If this idea of 5,000 children dying every day due to lack of safe drinking water is too “big” to grasp, let me try and help.  In Haiti there is no public water system.  One report said that 42% of infant deaths in Haiti are attibuted to unsafe drinking water.  Even at the orphanage (HCRM) the water has to be trucked in every few days and pumped into the houses cisterns.  The cistern pumps the water to the tank of the roof, and that provides the water pressure to the house.  The water is visibly clean, but it is not drinkable (although most of the children drink it, brush their teeth in it, etc). 

In talking more with Wilton and Meremen about how they grew up, we discovered that one of Wilton’s chores (at age 4) was to walk everyday to get water.  We also found out that drinking water for their family meant going down to the stream, washing clothes on the rocks and then filling up a bucket full of water for drinking and cooking.  Not surprising, since only 1 in 10 Haitians have access to piped water.  I guess that would also explain why one of the kids favorite things to do (at least for the first three weeks that they were home) was to get water out of the refridgerator door.

We take so much in our lives for granted . . . including clean, drinkable, water.