Annie Lennox: Haiti Has Overwhelmed Me
Annie Lennox updated fans on her blog at MySpace (@annielennox) on Monday (January 25), discussing the reaction to the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti earlier this month. The Eurythmics singer writes:
Haiti has overwhelmed me, as it has countless others, least of all the citizens of the country themselves, who’s suffering and trauma is beyond our collective imagination. And the ironic thing is that it takes a catastrophe of this unimaginable scale to earn international media focus and space.
Like so many people living in impoverished countries, Haitians have been trapped in a certain kind of suffering for decades, but we (Westerners) have become sidelined, because it’s off our radar and doesn’t compute. That doesn’t make us evil.. It merely highlights our overwhelming sense of disconnect and powerlessness. If you/ and I become consumed with despair, everything else becomes an even more lost cause… Just like the metaphor of someone trapped in the rubble for days, after the emergency response has been called off. A waning of tapping sounds to say that “you are alive” diminishing by the second.
