Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Guilty for enjoying your cruise

I saw today on CNN that some Royal Caribbean ships stopped at Royal Carbbean's private island at Labadee on the island of Hispaniola, the same Island that the country of Haiti is on. Apparently, this was quite insensitive to visit the island when there is such a crisis going on in Haiti. I have a heart full of sympathy for the Haitian people, but avoiding the cruise port of Labadee is not going to change anything. It's not going to change the number of people saved or lost nor will it clean up the buildings and rebuild the country. We should all take some time to reflect on the things we are grateful for and do what we can to support the Haitian people and all the people who have gone to Haiti to help. Skipping the Island of Hispaniola for another port will not change anything, to say that would be to say that we shouldn't visit the Dominican Republic and maybe we shouldn't visit other Caribbean islands either, they are close together after all. I was in NYC on September 11 and it was weird to see people getting their nails done, but a week later it wasn't so weird. It will be a LONG time until Haiti returns to anything resembling normal. Instead of worrying about people having pina colladas on the Labadee beach maybe we should worry about people forgetting the Haitian people in a months time when they're not in the news all day everyday.