Stories & Testimonies

Does anyone remember Hurricane Harvey? Irma and Maria have done a good job upstaging him, but for the folks whose lives were turned upside down in the region of Houston, Texas, where the storm deluged some areas—only one month ago—with over 50 inches of rain (Noah would sit up and take notice at that one, I think), the road ahead still looks pretty bleak.

We've all watched the suffering of thousands as Hurricane Harvey mercilessly pounded Houston, Texas, and the surrounding areas, feeling painfully helpless to do anything about it. This was an unprecedented disaster in many ways.

"My children are crying for food. I am helpless. I have no money. There's no hope…" lamented Setara Begum, a Rohingya refugee and mother of two, one of whom is just 5 months old. Such desperation is now being felt by thousands of Rohingya refugees impacted by Cyclone Mora, which struck Bangladesh 3 weeks ago.

"This is all our government gave us," one elderly woman said to me, while pointing to a single corrugated roofing panel measuring about 3-feet wide by 6-feet long. She was referring to the government of Cuba's response to the destruction of her home by Hurricane Matthew last October. I had a hard time believing her story, until, that is, I heard it repeated by so many others I met this week.

Every leaf from every tree and shrub was stripped away—it looked like the work of a massive fire or bomb. Each day during my visit this month I'm hearing similar chilling descriptions from those who survived the 145-mph onslaught of Hurricane Matthew last fall in Haiti. Corrugated metal sheeting, flimsily tacked on poor, shack-like homes for roofing and sometimes walls, became razor-sharp projectiles that wounded and maimed those who couldn't find adequate shelter in time. About 1,000 died, estimates say, but no one knows how many were wounded.