Here come the 'Fugees

DH left about 30 minutes ago for the airport; he and his fellow residents will meet two planes of hurricane refugees from the Gulf coast states and do triage, sending the worst off to area hospitals and the rest to the long-abandonned Reese Airforce Base just west of here. Well, the rest except for at least two -- they got word that two passengers have already died in transit.

Wow.

I returned from my trip with the girls on Monday, and have put off blogging because I wanted to upload some happy vacation pics and pretty day photos to share with you all. But that seems so pointless now.

I've been trying to wrap my brain around this natural disaster all week, trying to put myself in the proverbial shoes of the people floating around New Orleans on closet doors, waiting to be rescued, or holed up with thousands more, getting antsy and agressive, in a football stadium that's falling apart. I can't do it. I just can't fathom what it's like for them.

And now they're coming here, to what must seem like an alien climate of dust and horizon compared to the lush swamps they're used to. They seem like aliens to me, a little. I told DH to tell them they're in our prayers -- and they are, every day -- but somehow even praying for them hasn't quite humanized the refugees for me. I don't say that to be cruel.... I'm not sure I can articulate what I mean very well, or at all.

Their whole experience is just so inconceivable to me -- not the disaster, even in its tremendous scope, but the fact that they've been living on nothing for an entire week; that they've been scooped up and brought here, bewildered and bedraggled, with no idea what's in store for them next; that they have nothing to go home to, even if they could go home....

They; them; a separate entity. There but for the grace of God go you or I, but I guess it's somehow comforting to me that I can't imagine the refugee experience, that I get to stand a step away from the tragedy and shake my head with a gentle tsk-tsk at their loss and the region's unpreparedness for it. I need it to feel alien, if you know what I mean.

I try to avoid news of the disaster lately; it just gets more horrible all the time.


~RCH~