Neighborkids Respond to News of Earthquake in Haiti

This afternoon, neighborkids Da'Sean and Holly stopped by.  Da'Sean told us that at school today he found out about yesterday's earthquake in Haiti.  He asked if he could go on the computer to show us.  He googled "earthquake" and found some stories about the disaster and read them out loud to us.

He also took this cell phone picture of a computer screenshot of the damage:

In a few minutes Dalisha and Chunk Chunk came over too, and then everybody was crowded around the computer to find out what happened.  Dalisha said she wasn't sure what an earthquake is, which is understandable since we don't have earthquakes here in Florida.  Da'Sean explained, "Right now we're floating on lava and plates.  The plates, they be sometimes going wiggly and that makes the ground shake."

The neighborkids checked out some more stories, and these were some of their quiet comments in response:

"I feel bad for these people."
"They don't got nowhere to live."
"Some are kids, some are grown-ups, and babies too."
"Poor little baby."

The kids then counted the money they keep in the baby wipes container that they turned into a cashbox:

This past summer, the scavenger hunters chose to use some of their car wash earnings to bake a cake and make some fruit salad for the family of our neighbor Will Holley after he was shot and killed in our neighborhhood.  Later in the summer, they decided to put some in a card for our neighbor Miss Gloria when her husband died.  Today Da'Sean, Holly and Dalisha talked for a bit about whether they wanted the scavenger hunters to contribute some of the ten dollars left in the box to help the people in Haiti -- because even though they are not our neighbors, as Holly said, "They're still friends."

When it comes to our Central-Cocoanut scavenger hunters, it seems the spirit of neighborliness reaches far...