Wow! Clear, bright and sunny all day. No rain.
I started working on the fence around the house. It was completely wrecked by wind, flooding. and falling trees, but I managed to salvage most of the boards from the front fence. The bamboo fence and supporting framework is a total loss.
We waited all day for news of a shipment of horse supplies. Five pallets of stuff have been sitting at the airport in San Juan. Hacienda, the island tax department, wanted us to pay $500 import tax on aid donated by one nonprofit to another nonprofit to be given free to horse owners in need. It's taken nearly a week to straighten that out.
If this is the way all the aid to the island is being treated, no wonder so little is getting through to those who need it.
The truck with the supplies finally arrived just before dark. Elaine ha a couple of friends/volunteers to help unload. In a couple of hours we had it all unloaded, sorted and stacked. The bad news is there were supposed to be five small generators in this shipment. Somehow, when they started loading the truck at the airport, the generators weren't there. Hmmmmm...
This isn't the first shipment that's gone missing. A pallet of 40 bags of grain went missing at the airport in Aguadilla about two weeks after the hurricane.
Back when we took the RAM (Remote Area Medical) people to Iglesia Ciudad de Salvación, I had a conversation with their pilot Ron about who should be providing aid. Based on his reading of writings of the Founding Fathers, primarily The Federalist Papers, his premise is the Federal Government has no business being in the natural-disaster relief business. In his view the proper providers are church and community groups like Iglesia Ciudad de Salvación. (There is a certain irony in his use of The Federalist Papers to support his position. The Federalist Papers were written to create support for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Alexander Hamilton and the other authors advocated a strong central government.)
While I absolutely agree that the people at Iglacia Ciudad de Salvación are doing an infinitely better job than either the Puerto Rican or U.S. Federal government of getting relief in the hands of those who need it, their efforts, like ours with horse owners, points out the greatest inherent weakness of this system: resources.
Even now, more than two months after the hurricane moved on, there are still a huge number of vulnerable people--and horses, dogs, and cats--on this island.
But the hurricane is history, old news. People in the States have given, donated, sent care packages, supplies. The storm is over. Things are getting better, getting back to "normal." Right? There is gas for cars. So 75% of the island still doesn't have electricity. Generators are back in stock at Home Depot. Even the grocery store has generators for sale. Yeah, some things are hard to come by but there were plenty of turkeys in the stores for Thanksgiving. For those who could afford them. And those who had a way to cook them.
Ciudad's big stocks of supplies are gone. Except for small trickles of individual donations, there aren't anymore supplies coming, for either people or horses.
Don't get me wrong. I do not believe the government has a duty to feed our horses. I do believe the government has an obligation to help people. The government has the continuing resources and the ability to deliver them as long as the need exists. Community groups, like the church and our local efforts to help horses, only have resources as long as donors keep them supplied. Once those donations dry up--and they are drying up--community groups have nothing left to give, no matter how much they want to.
No comments:
Post a Comment