While we in California wander around in our cars, hiding from the rain, people in the recent Tsunami affected areas are still without the necessary food, shelter and protection from further damage and harm. This even is not something we have to put behind us; this is something we have to put in front of us. We cannot try to ignore this and “move on with our lives”; we cannot move on. This is not a situation where the strategy of putting the situation behind us to return to normal and build stronger lives than before will work; we have to fix this first, then we can think up of any strategy. Our own people are dying everyday in the Tsunami affected area, even as I type this, and even as you, the reader, reads this.

Let us not wait for the TV to tell us the news; let us research and find out ourselves through our own findings, through local humanitarian chapters, through the internet, through different newspapers and organizations, and more. Let us find out which organization is really sending all the money as a form of relief to the affected areas, and which organizations or their representatives are keeping the money. Let us find out which individuals really wish to help the orphans there, and which individuals wish to sell them off into child labor or into the “sex business”, taking advantage of them in this hour of tragedy. Let us find a solution to end such tactics and to continue the adoption process, instead of making all the scared children wait in open fields and without food and instead of telling them “You will have a new home and a new life now”, we tell them, as if doing them a favor, “You will stay here, but at least we saved you from sex labor.” That is great, but it is not the solution; it is the first step in the solution. Do not hold off the adoption process as a solution; hold it for organizations or people that haven’t been verified yet, and continue it for others. Why should the children suffer for the cracks in the system that is the fault of the governments, who have no concrete and secure system to screen individuals, organizations and parents who wish to adopt in those areas? The governments are doing everything they can. However, when it comes to the lives of innocent kids, more than enough is required. Even then, the current action of limiting adoptions is a step in the right direction. Now its time to solidify that step and then take the next step quickly of finding the right people in this wave of scam artists.

We can live our current “daily lives” while caring at the same time. We can go around posting articles about this and still post something about the movies in the next article. We can donate $5 dollars to any relief and still go out and enjoy a $100 dinner and not feel guilty; at least something is being done. However, the mentality that if you want to help, you have to donate everything, or that if you do not want to help that much, you don’t do anything, is simply wrong and we as humans must realize after all these centuries that such a mentality will do us no good.

If we cannot go there to help, let us donate something, If we cannot donate, let us persuade others to donate. If we cannot persuade others to donate, let us spread the word that help is needed. If we cannot spread the word, let us at least keep this in our mind and give it at least some concern in our hearts; that is the least thing we can do to show to ourselves that we have feelings that a human being should have.