Before COVID-19 struck, I went to Vietnam with Habitat for Humanity three times to help build homes in Vietnamese villages. They were small homes, made out of brick and concrete, and they replaced homes of bamboo and mud floors. They were all surrounded by the life of a returning earth: water buffalo and birds and the ancestors’ shrines erected in the paddy fields.
When I was in my 20s, United States bombing nearly destroyed this land – our “pacification program” meant we had to destroy villages in order to save them. And, there I was, some 50-odd years later, building homes.
This won’t happen in Gaza. I don’t think Habitat for Humanity can replace a city. I don’t think Habitat for Humanity could replace Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, make no mistake, this is what happens when a U.S.-manufactured, 2,000 pound bomb hits its target: total annihilation of a world. Is this what we want? If not, each of us must decide what to do because what’s being done is being done in our name.
Nicole d’Entremont
Peaks Island
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