Two tectonic plates budge slightly and the Earth shrugs indifferently, the way it’s been doing forever. Villages disappear. Thousands die. Dreams, homes, lives, the past, the future are swept away, ground to bits, bloated by the tropical sun. Change the channel, honey, we’ve seen this movie before.
A somnambulant, hungover first world awakens from its post-Christmas binge of indulgence, reaches into its pocket and flips some spare change, a Tums and the insurance settlement it got for the trip it didn’t take because we haven’t reached peak covid yet. “Sorry, it’s the best I can do on short notice.”
Challenged by an unimportant do-gooder from an irrelevant part of town and upbraided by a friend for being stingy—stingy? Moi?—it fumbles in the other pocket, the one with foldin’ money, and coughs up another $20. The friend, not waiting for the taunts of parsimonious penny-pincher, ups the ante with $40 of its own. And the new wave of giving goes round and round, each friend, each country in turn raising the bet, sweetening the pot in a seemingly endless cycle of call and raise. The game takes on a life of its own.
But no one stops to ask, “Hey, just what the heck is the appropriate response to this catastrophe?”
In the aftermath of the unwanted late Christmas present visited on some remote place people had given passing thought to as a potential vacation, what’s a first-world boy or girl supposed to do? Send money? Lots of that being promised, bundled and headed in the direction of the people who need it and the miscreants who’ll siphon off more than their share. Demand government action? Lots of that being demanded, with heads of state being chided for stinginess and delay and general inaction. Pitch in and help? Don’t know if it’s such a good idea to add another body to an area unable to nurture the living already on the ground.
Go on vacation?
What the hell, why not? I mean we—and by we I mean those who still have either cash or credit—have deprived ourselves for, let’s see, two years! And there’s all those ads beckoning us. Those photos.
Under a colourful beach umbrella poked into the sand sit two comfy-looking chaise longues. In one, a man so white he’d better have slathered on SPF 5,000 sunscreen, reclines. He looks well rested but for all we know, he’s just spent three days in travel hell trying desperately to escape from a high-pressure human resources job where he’s spent the previous year downsizing thousands of working stiffs into oblivion for the benefit of the company’s shareholders.
He might be asleep or just resting his eyes. We can’t tell since he has shades on. A small table beside him holds a drink with melting ice and a book. Maybe he’ll read later. Maybe he’ll go for a swim. Maybe he’ll just order another drink.
The beach itself looks very well tended. The sand is inviting, the sky is blue and the picture feels warm. A tropical vacation.
Next to him is another chaise. Its thin, blue pad is covered at the upper end by a colourful beach towel showing a blazing sun setting behind palm trees and a distant mountain across a postcard bay. The man’s female companion sits pensively on the edge of her longue. She sports stylish swimwear and the same super strength sunscreen. She looks concerned.
Her attention, unlike her partner’s, is directed toward the scene of rubble behind them. The foreshortened scene suggests a long, telephoto lens, but perhaps 20 metres behind the couple, a dozen or so workmen are busy clearing away the flotsam deposited amongst the palm trees by the tsunami. Branches, sticks, seaweed, ropes, fishing floats, a blue tarp, swaths of red, white and blue cloth all litter the expanse between the couple and the buildings that still stand in the background.
One worker, a lean, sun-darkened local man dressed in a dirty white T-shirt and long, dark shorts, stands facing the direction of the couple. One hand is on his hip, the other raised to his masked mouth. He’s looking away from the couple. He might be disgusted; he might be diverting his face as he yawns or coughs. He might be exhausted. He might have been removing bodies from the rubble moments or days before.
The woman tourist looks tormented, especially compared to her snoozing companion. Should she pitch in and help? Is there a language barrier? Has she already proffered help and been graciously turned down by workers who are thankful tourists are still in their midst so cooks, busboys, chambermaids and bartenders still have work? After all, someone had to deliver those cold drinks.
The picture perfectly encapsulates the tortured reality of a devastated people and a puzzled outside world. What to do?
Are tourists in a tourist resort after a catastrophe more out of place than the world’s media clamouring to cover the event? Did all the reporters on the scene, packaging and repackaging the same soundbites, pack their own food and water when they went over? Are they staying at the tourist hotels or crashing with local media types? Is the incremental value of the thousandth “news” story greater than the incremental value of the thousandth tourist? Is the contribution made by seemingly clueless tourists more or less valuable than the contribution made by the distraught survivor pestering local officials to help him find his missing family member?
Don’t know. We all have problems, eh?
Especially now. Especially since the pandemic has upended our lives, cheated us out of our god-given right to travel to such tropical wonders and warm our cold toes in hot sand without having to jump through hoops, get swabbed incessantly, worry about having our flight delayed by some numbskull who won’t keep his mask on for the six-hour flight.
I mean, yeah, we feel for these—those—folks. But after all, this was a natural disaster. It’s not like it was our fault. We’ve got enough problems of our own. Don’t we?
Tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, these are disaster as extravaganza. Fodder for the 24-hour “news” cycle. Disaster as entertainment. Real reality TV. They focus our attention... at least until—oh, look, a squirrel.
