Three days ago Vaughan and I got connected to cabletv, which finally enables us to understand the sounds coming out of the box :-). TV might offer a window to the world, but after living without it for several months the audiovisual presence at first felt like an invasion of our living room. The international news channels are especially overwhelming; it’s hard to stay immune to their streams of reports on terror, grief and disaster. Reading a newspaper article on the South Asia earthquake for instance certainly makes an impression, but seeing actual images of the deceased and destitute leaves a far greater mark. As I was curled up in be
d last night under my warm duvet my thoughts wandered to the survivors of this disaster, and how they were spending their night - most of them without sufficient shelter in inhospitable mountain areas. But despite plenty of international media coverage on these horrid conditions, the world does not seem to donate enough aid, with millions of people still left homeless and a fast-approaching Himalayan winter threatening to kill thousands. Have the past 12 months simply brought too many natural disasters and are people suffering from ‘disaster fatigue’? Or are the cynics right when they claim that the response to the tsunami was so overwhelming because the hit areas were Western tourist destinations? Whatever the reason, the UN warns that this disaster may have the number of people who died after the event bigger than those actually killed by the earthquake; quite a chilling fact... About 450,000 tents are needed, nearly 100,000 have been distributed and another 200,000 are in the pipeline; a lot of these taken care of or co-ordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. My ex-colleague at New Zealand Red Cross seems quite positive about the financial response in New Zealand, and part of me wishes I was still working at the Red Cross office so I could help out in some small way. Definitely puts our occasional Japan-troubles into perspective...
d last night under my warm duvet my thoughts wandered to the survivors of this disaster, and how they were spending their night - most of them without sufficient shelter in inhospitable mountain areas. But despite plenty of international media coverage on these horrid conditions, the world does not seem to donate enough aid, with millions of people still left homeless and a fast-approaching Himalayan winter threatening to kill thousands. Have the past 12 months simply brought too many natural disasters and are people suffering from ‘disaster fatigue’? Or are the cynics right when they claim that the response to the tsunami was so overwhelming because the hit areas were Western tourist destinations? Whatever the reason, the UN warns that this disaster may have the number of people who died after the event bigger than those actually killed by the earthquake; quite a chilling fact... About 450,000 tents are needed, nearly 100,000 have been distributed and another 200,000 are in the pipeline; a lot of these taken care of or co-ordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. My ex-colleague at New Zealand Red Cross seems quite positive about the financial response in New Zealand, and part of me wishes I was still working at the Red Cross office so I could help out in some small way. Definitely puts our occasional Japan-troubles into perspective... 
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